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 ...

For more than a century, scientists have sought to reconstruct human evolution using diverse lines of evidence, including fossils, genetic variation across populations and ancient DNA. Building on ...

In pursuit of knowledge, the evolution of humanity ranks with the origins of life and the universe. And yet, except when an exciting find hits the headlines, palaeoanthropology and its related fields ...

A new study, published July 6, 2026, in the journal Nature Communications, suggests that two of the best-known trends in human evolution—brain growth and the reduction in the size of the face and ...

South Africa has one of the world’s richest fossil records of hominins (humans and their fossil ancestors). But many misconceptions still exist regarding human evolution, and school textbooks contain ...

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 ...