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 ...

Learn how repeated burn injuries may have acted as a form of natural selection, influencing human genes linked to healing and immune response.

Humans have lived with fire for over a million years. Scientists now say burn injuries may have influenced human evolution and healing.

Humans' exposure to high temperature burn injuries may have played an important role in our evolutionary development, shaping ...

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 ...

Humans were living in rainforests roughly 150,000 years ago, some 80,000 years earlier than was previously thought—and may have been an important center for early human evolution. This is the ...

Vertebrate morphology exhibits remarkable diversity, reflecting a complex interplay of developmental processes, genetic regulation and environmental pressures. This variation arises from a combination ...

Human evolution has long been tied to growing brain size, and new research suggests prenatal hormones may have played a surprising role. By studying the relative lengths of index and ring fingers — a ...

The evolution of the human species is marked by an increase in brain size. Now new research suggests that could be partly ...

A digital reconstruction of a million-year-old skull suggests humans may have diverged from our ancient ancestors 400,000 years earlier than thought and in Asia, not Africa, a study found. The ...

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 ...