Our species, Homo sapiens, has been evolving for more than 300,000 years, but the story of human origins starts much earlier.

The way Sahelanthropus tchadensis moved has long been debated. The discovery of a small bump on the front of the thigh bone ...

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 ...

Humans were living in rainforests roughly 150,000 years ago, some 80,000 years earlier than was previously thought—and may have been an important center for early human evolution. This is the ...

Scientists working in Ethiopia's Afar Region have made discoveries that rewrite our understanding of early human history. For ...

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, ...

Researchers found that ancient hominids—including early humans—were exposed to lead throughout childhood, leaving chemical traces in fossil teeth. Experiments suggest this exposure may have driven ...

Rachael has a degree in Zoology from the University of Southampton, and specializes in animal behavior, evolution, palaeontology, and the environment. Rachael has a degree in Zoology from the ...

Important, previously unrecognized genetic changes common to all ancient and modern Homo sapiens spread in Africa more than 300,000 years ago, a new study finds. After that, the same investigation ...

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.

Researchers have successfully reconstructed the ancient genomes of Human betaherpesvirus 6A and 6B (HHV-6A/B) from human ...