National Research Council (U.S.) Board on Earth Sciences and Resources "The hominin fossil record documents a history of critical evolutionary events that have ultimately shaped and defined what it ...

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 ...

Human evolution is explained through branching lineages rather than a simple linear progression. Fossils, genetics, and archaeology together reveal how multiple human species emerged, interacted, and ...

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 ...

In the deserts of Ethiopia, scientists uncovered fossils showing that early members of our genus Homo lived side by side with a newly identified species of Australopithecus nearly three million years ...

The human genome is made up of 23 pairs of chromosomes, the biological blueprints that make humans … well, human. But it turns out that some of our DNA — about 8% — are the remnants of ancient viruses ...

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 ...

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 ...