Fossils unearthed in Ethiopia are reshaping our view of human evolution. Instead of a straight march from ape-like ancestors to modern humans, researchers now see a tangled, branching tree with ...

Human and chimpanzee genomes are more than 98% identical, and the genes themselves barely differ. The changes that make us human are thought to hide instead in the DNA that controls when and where ...

Natural selection has long been considered the driving force behind human evolution. But a landmark study of 87 fossil skulls spanning the past two million years suggests the story is far more complex ...

South Africa has one of the world’s richest fossil records of hominins (humans and their fossil ancestors). But many misconceptions still exist regarding human evolution, and school textbooks contain ...

This article predates the current owners of Science Blog. It has not been reviewed under the current editorial process and is kept as part of the archive. A new study reveals that our current ...

A study of 225 newborns suggests prenatal estrogen may have played a role in the evolution of larger human brains. Boys with finger-length patterns linked to higher estrogen exposure before birth ...