Researchers Say Humans Are In the Midst of an Evolutionary Shift Like Never Before
AI-generated illustration. Credit: ZME Science/Midjourney. Human evolution has often been depicted as a process of adaptation, where natural…
AI is helping to decode animals’ speech. Will it also let us talk with them?
Deep in the rainforests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mélissa Berthet found bonobos doing something thought…
This Bizarre Fish Has 8 Rows of Forehead Teeth It Uses During Sex
Spotted ratfish are scaleless, rabbit-faced deep-sea fish, about two feet (61 centimeters) long, and native to the northeastern…
These Newly Discovered Cells Breathe in Two Ways
The team members went through a process of incrementally determining what elements and molecules the bacterial strain could…
Paleontologist Discovers First Known Silurian Horseshoe Crab
Horseshoe crabs are an ancient lineage with an evolutionary history stretching back 450 million years (Ordovician period) and…
Genetics Reveal How Human Contact Shapes Language Evolution
Summary: A new study shows that genetic evidence of historical contact between populations reveals consistent patterns of language…
DNA From a Mysterious Extinct Hominin May Have Helped Ancient Americans Survive
New research suggests that as ancient humans migrated into the Americas, they carried a surprising evolutionary advantage hidden…
How did life get multicellular? Five simple organisms could have the answer
For some three billion years, unicellular organisms ruled Earth. Then, around one billion years ago, a new chapter…
Why Great White Sharks’ DNA Doesn’t Add Up
Once survivors of the ice age, great white sharks carry a strange DNA riddle. Nuclear and mitochondrial results…
Mystery hominin skull discovered in 1960 dated to at least 286,000 years old
A mystery in human evolution may be close to being solved, thanks to a new study by the…
Genetic mutation in key enzyme may explain why humans survived while Neanderthals went extinct
A minor genetic difference in one of the enzymes may have helped separate modern humans from Neanderthals and…
Fossil teeth in Ethiopia reveal new Australopithecus species that lived alongside early Homo ancestors
Researchers in northeastern Ethiopia have made a thrilling discovery of fossilized teeth that may belong to a new…