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

The human use of fire, attested by evidence from Africa, goes back around 1.6m years. But, hitherto, the oldest signs of ...

The human evolutionary tree can be complicated—but understanding where hominids end and hominins begin reveals how we fit into the broader family of primates. This episode breaks down the distinctions ...

In amber some 99 million years old, LMU researchers have discovered the oldest known mosquito larva. The Cretaceous fossil comes from the Kachin region in Myanmar and was preserved in excellent ...

One of the most significant controversies in the study of human evolution and migration is determining when and by what route the first hominids arrived in Europe from Africa. Recent geological dating ...

UC San Diego researchers have found high levels of lead in the teeth of both Neanderthals (left) and modern humans (right). However, a gene mutation may have protected modern human brains, allowing ...

For decades, textbooks painted a dramatic picture of early humans as tool-using hunters who rose quickly to the top of the food chain. The tale was that Homo habilis, one of the earliest ...

In the dry, rugged badlands of Ethiopia’s Afar Region, a team of scientists has uncovered fossils that could change how you picture human evolution. These finds, dating back between 2.6 and 2.8 ...

As early humans spread from lush African forests into grasslands, their need for ready sources of energy led them to develop a taste for grassy plants, especially grains and the starchy plant tissue ...

Scientists with the Field Museum of Chicago have discovered that a pigeon-sized Archaeopteryx fossil in its collection displays an array of features previously unknown when it comes to the earliest ...

On a bright, late-summer day in north-central Europe around 300,000 years ago, a team of perhaps a couple dozen hunters got into their assigned positions for a big kill. Little did they know that ...

For decades, the dominant theory in human evolution suggested that modern humans descended from a single ancestral lineage in Africa. However, groundbreaking new research from the University of ...