Even tiny muscles around the ears hint at our evolutionary past. In many mammals, tiny ear muscles allow the outer ear (pinna ...

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 ...

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 ...

Where do we come from and how did we evolve into the beings and bodies we are today? The new book "Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution" argues for a better ...

Humans, who are classified among the five great apes, are closest genetically, i.e., DNA similarity, to chimpanzees (98.8%-99%) and bonobos (98.8%). [Blueringmedia ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

The human body is often described as a marvel of “perfect design”: elegant, efficient and finely tuned for its purpose. Yet, when we look closer, a rather different picture emerges. Far from being a ...

A new Yale study provides a fuller picture of the genetic changes that shaped the evolution of the human brain, and how the process differed from the evolution of chimpanzees. For the study, published ...