Human evolution’s biggest mystery, which emerged 15 years ago from a 60,000-year-old pinkie finger bone, finally started to ...

Scientists have reconstructed the head of an ancient human relative from 1.5 million year-old fossilized bones and teeth. But ...

Modern humans descended from not one, but at least two ancestral populations that drifted apart and later reconnected, long before modern humans spread across the globe. Using advanced analysis based ...

Tiny genetic variations between humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans might not be all they were cracked up to be.

The human genome is made up of 23 pairs of chromosomes, the biological blueprints that make humans … well, human. But it turns out that some of our DNA — about 8% — are the remnants of ancient viruses ...

For decades, a neat story about human origins has floated through textbooks and documentaries: modern humans emerged in East Africa, then spread south later. It’s clean, familiar, and easy to repeat.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may be the result of millions of years of evolution. Rapid neuronal evolution in humans is likely ASD’s genetic cause, new research suggests. Though autism can cause ...

A groundbreaking international study changes the view that exposure to the toxic metal lead is largely a post-industrial phenomenon. The research reveals that our human ancestors were periodically ...

Throughout most of human history, evolution progressed slowly. Small genetic changes took thousands of years to permeate populations. Natural selection was intentional, reactive, and gradual. However, ...

When scientists today work to decode the human genome, they use high-tech methods to view the microscopic chromosomes and even pluck individual genes out of a cell. But in Darwin's time, it was ...