A living fossil fish just proved we've misunderstood a major chapter in the story of evolution. For decades, the coelacanth — an ancient fish species that first appeared 400 million years ago — was ...

Human evolution is not a straight line but a complex branching tree shared with other great apes. This overview explains the distinction between hominids and hominins and traces the evolutionary ...

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 ...

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 ...

Two new studies add to the evidence that human activity, from fishing to urban development, is driving the evolution of wild animals. By Emily Anthes Call it the case of the incredible shrinking cod.

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 ...

We are indeed still evolving, though it can be hard to tell because it happens over generations and often involves things you can't see, such as what foods different people are able to digest. When ...