Human evolution is often told as a tidy story of adaptation, yet some of our most familiar body parts still defy straightforward explanation. From the jut of the human chin to the curve of the outer ...

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 four billion years of our ...

One of the defining features of human evolution is the steady expansion of our brains. New findings suggest this growth may be partly linked to higher levels of estrogen before birth. Surprisingly, a ...

How did the complexity of many organisms living today evolve from the simpler body plans of their ancestors? This is a central question in biology. Take our hands, for example: Every time we type a ...

Fossils unearthed in Ethiopia are reshaping our view of human evolution. Instead of a straight march from ape-like ancestors to modern humans, researchers now see a tangled, branching tree with ...

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 ...