That could place the ancestors of Homo sapiens—modern humans—outside Africa, an idea which flips everything palaeontologists ...

Scientists discovered a new human species, Homo juluensis, in the Xujiayao site in China that lived 200,000 years ago.

Ancient DNA from Denisovans left humans a powerful genetic advantage — a gene that helped early Americans survive new ...

The findings, described in the journal Nature, push back the earliest known date for controlled fire-making by roughly ...

When scientists sequenced the first Neanderthal genomes, they did not just resurrect a lost branch of the human family tree, ...

Modern human faces are surprisingly delicate compared with the jutting jaws and broad noses of our closest extinct cousins.

When writer Jean M. Auel first published her now bestselling novel, “The Clan of the Cave Bear,” back in 1980, she made what seemed a questionable conceit at the center of her story: that our distant ...

Kissing, for all popularity, is a bit of a mystery. Scientists have long debated when humans’ ancestors first put their lips together, and whether the act is simply a cultural trait. A new study ...

Matilda Brindle has previously received funding from the Natural Environment Research Council and the Leakey Foundation If I asked you to imagine your dream snog, chances are it wouldn’t be with a ...

The first analysis of a well-preserved nasal cavity in the human fossil record has revealed that the hefty Neanderthal nose wasn’t adapted to cold climates in the way many people thought it was.

Researchers found that ancient hominids—including early humans—were exposed to lead throughout childhood, leaving chemical traces in fossil teeth. Experiments suggest this exposure may have driven ...

Every human face is unique, allowing us to distinguish between individuals. We know little about how facial features are encoded in our DNA, but we may be able to learn more about how our faces ...