Even tiny muscles around the ears hint at our evolutionary past. In many mammals, tiny ear muscles allow the outer ear (pinna ...
This is an extract from Our Human Story, our newsletter about the revolution in archaeology. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every month. If I tried to recap all the new fossils, new methods and ...
In a recent review published in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, researchers discussed the role of climatic shifts and vegetation changes in driving the evolution within the subfamily ...
Researchers at the University of Maine are theorizing that human beings may be in the midst of a major evolutionary shift—driven not by genes, but by culture. "Human evolution seems to be changing ...
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 ...
What will humans be like generations from now in a world transformed by artificial intelligence (AI)? Plenty of thinkers have applied themselves to questions like this, considering how AI will alter ...
South Africa has one of the world’s richest fossil records of hominins (humans and their fossil ancestors). But many misconceptions still exist regarding human evolution, and school textbooks contain ...
The human body is a machine whose many parts – from the microscopic details of our cells to our limbs, eyes, liver and brain – have been assembled in fits and starts over the 4 billion years of our ...
Human evolution has long been tied to growing brain size, and new research suggests prenatal hormones may have played a surprising role. By studying the relative lengths of index and ring fingers — a ...
Humans, who are classified among the five great apes, are closest genetically, i.e., DNA similarity, to chimpanzees (98.8%-99%) and bonobos (98.8%). [Blueringmedia ...