During a brief but dramatic chapter in Earth's history about 41,000 years ago, the planet’s magnetic field nearly collapsed. What followed was a cascade of environmental and biological changes that ...

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 ...

On Valentine’s Day in 2018, a team of scientists walked across a flat expanse in the badlands of northeastern Ethiopia, scanning the ground for fossils. An eagle-eyed field assistant, Omar Abdulla, ...

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 ...

The British geneticist Steve Jones has recently given a lecture at University College London entitled “Is human evolution over?” His answer to his own question is in the affirmative. I agree with ...

Understanding human evolution through the study of whale evolution Brief definition and history of mammals How did land-based mammals return to the sea? Fossils from "transitional species" trace whale ...

Shaw Badenhorst works for the University of the Witwatersrand. He receives funding from GENUS, the National Research Foundation and the Palaeontological Scientific Trust. South Africa has one of the ...