By now, it’s firmly established that modern humans and their Neanderthal relatives met and mated as our ancestors expanded ...

Did modern humans erase Neanderthals, or did our close cousins fade away for reasons that had little to do with us? A pair of major papers in Science and Nature on Dec. 12, 2024, sharpen that question ...

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A series of lower jaws from North Africa demonstrates variation among hominin fossils. The jaw on ...

When Neanderthals and modern humans first got together, they preferred pairings between Neanderthal men and human women, a new study of ancient and modern genomes suggests. The finding helps to ...

Geneticists have found an interesting pattern in how early humans and Neanderthals interbred—and it wasn't balanced.

Many people today simply assume that our evolution has quietly ended with the development of the modern human. It's easy to think that medicine, science, and modern living have made us "perfect" or ...

Denisovans, a mysterious human relative, left behind far more than a handful of fossils—they left genetic fingerprints in modern humans across the globe. Multiple interbreeding events with distinct ...

(CNN) — Modern humans are evolutionary survivors, thriving generation after generation while our ancient relatives died out. Now, new research into our brain chemistry suggests that an enzyme unique ...

Researchers studied ancient tooth fossils and found that a gene mutation in modern humans (right) better protected them against lead and gave them an advantage over Neanderthals (left). Kyle Dykes / ...

Simulations of Australopithecus hominins’ anatomy suggest that when they gave birth, they may have exerted tremendous pressure on their pelvic floors, putting them at risk of tearing ...

Outlining the problem / P. A. Mellars, M. J. Aitken and C. B. Stringer -- Uranium-series dating and the origin of modern man / Henry P. Schwarcz -- Luminescence dating relevant to human origins / M. J ...