The same regulatory landscape which influences the development of fingers is present in fish, despite their distinct lack of digits. When researchers used CRISPR (a common gene editing tool) to fiddle ...

To Shakespeare’s Hamlet we humans are “the paragon of animals”. But recent advances in genetics are suggesting that humans are far from being evolution’s greatest achievement. For example, humans have ...

Our sensitive teeth originally evolved from the "body armor" of extinct fish that lived 465 million years ago, scientists say. In a new study, the researchers showed how sensory tissue discovered on ...

In 1758, Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus gave humans a scientific name: Homo sapiens, which means "wise human" in Latin. Although Linnaeus grouped humans with other apes, it was English biologist ...

Scientists have traced the evolutionary origin of humans' outer ears to the gills of ancient fish through a series of gene-editing experiments. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn ...

Paleoanthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi travels the world digging into the origin of Homo sapiens in a five-part BBC series ...

You may never have wondered why you have five fingers at the end of each arm (or why you have fingers at all, for that matter) but the answer is surprisingly interesting and a little cheeky. A recent ...

Laurence D. Hurst is the author of The Evolution of Imperfection, published by Princeton University Press. This was enabled by funding from The Humboldt Foundation and the European Research Council.