Human evolution is not a straight line but a complex branching tree shared with other great apes. This overview explains the ...

Fossils discovered at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco represent the oldest known remains of Homo sapiens, dating back around 300,000 years. This episode explores how these finds reshaped ideas about human ...

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Newly published research appearing in the journal Nature (Ragsdale, A. P. et al., “A weakly structured stem for human origins in Africa,” Nature [2023]) proposes a new interpretation regarding the ...

It seems that southern Africa provided an ecological refuge where people adapted successfully for more than 200,000 years – without other hunter-gatherer groups coming in from elsewhere.

Recent fossil finds could mean that "Lucy" wasn't our direct ancestor, some scientists say. Others strongly disagree.

When studying how fossil hominids moved, researchers usually analyze the morphology of bones—which is crucial for ...

If we look across the whole of the mammal branch of the tree of life, we find there are many groups of mammals that have ...

Analysis of a jawbone in the Hualongdong cave in eastern China dated at 300,000 years old has shown an intriguing array of features both archaic and modern. The nearly complete mandible together with ...

A sweeping new genetic analysis suggests that humans living in southern Africa spent roughly 100,000 years in isolation, long enough for their DNA to drift far beyond the range of genetic diversity ...

National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek is retracing the path of human migration. More specifically, the scientific ...

Since the discovery of Neanderthals nearly two centuries ago, paleoanthropologists have grappled with an evolutionary mystery: Why did Homo sapiens survive as a species while their stockier cousins ...