New fossil discoveries are reshaping scientists’ understanding of a pivotal chapter in human evolution, revealing that several human ancestor lineages lived side by side nearly 3 million years ago.

This overview argues that the story of human evolution is being reshaped by a series of recent discoveries rather than by one ...

Hundreds of hominin fossils reveal that human body size remained stable for ages before a sharp increase in early members of ...

This has been quite the wild year in human evolution stories. Our relatives, living and extinct, got a lot of attention—from new developments in ape cognition to an expanded perspective of a ...

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Walking on two legs has long been considered a milestone in human evolution and one of our most defining characteristics. Until now, researchers assumed that the first humans originated in Africa and ...

Humans really do rule the world. We took over fast and far, more than any other wild vertebrates. We inhabit nearly every corner of the world, and can thrive in deserts, tropical rainforests and even ...

Mosquitoes haven’t always had a taste for human blood — partly because the tiny yet dangerous insects have been around a lot longer than humans. Pinpointing when mosquitoes shifted their preference to ...

Long before humans became master hunters, our ancestors were already thriving by making the most of what nature left behind. New research suggests that scavenging animal carcasses wasn’t a desperate ...

Some 4,000 years ago, as ancient civilizations such as the Minoans in Crete and the Neo-Sumerian Empire in Mesopotamia were shaping cultures in Europe and the Middle East, human biology itself was ...