Life on Earth began in a way that still boggles the mind. Around 4.5 billion years ago, a chemical process called abiogenesis ...

Human newborns arrive remarkably underdeveloped. The reason lies in a deep evolutionary trade-off between big brains, bipedalism and the limits of motherhood.

On Valentine’s Day in 2018, a team of scientists walked across a flat expanse in the badlands of northeastern Ethiopia, scanning the ground for fossils. An eagle-eyed field assistant, Omar Abdulla, ...

The evolution of the human species is marked by an increase in brain size. Now new research suggests that could be partly ...

Humans are fundamentally technological creatures. We depend on the manufacture and use of tools for our survival to a degree qualitatively greater than any other species. Therefore, an understanding ...

Humans, who are classified among the five great apes, are closest genetically, i.e., DNA similarity, to chimpanzees (98.8%-99%) and bonobos (98.8%). [Blueringmedia ...

This has been quite the wild year in human evolution stories. Our relatives, living and extinct, got a lot of attention—from new developments in ape cognition to an expanded perspective of a ...

Human evolution has long been tied to growing brain size, and new research suggests prenatal hormones may have played a surprising role. By studying the relative lengths of index and ring fingers — a ...

Modern humans, Neanderthals, and other recent relatives on our human family tree evolved bigger brains much more rapidly than earlier species, a new study of human brain evolution has found. The study ...

Scientists find genetic mutation, millions of years ago. Oct. 12, 2011 — -- About three million years ago human predecessors embarked on a new course that would forever alter the evolution of our ...

Researchers discovered that autism’s prevalence may be linked to human brain evolution. Specific neurons in the outer brain evolved rapidly, and autism-linked genes changed under natural selection.