TWO centuries ago, questioning the origins of humankind was severely constrained by religious orthodoxy, even in the scientific community. Since then there has been an astonishing revolution in our ...

Much of the early human fossil record originates from just a few places in Africa, where favorable geological conditions have preserved a trove of fossils used by scientists to reconstruct the story ...

A study of 225 newborns suggests prenatal estrogen may have played a role in the evolution of larger human brains. Boys with finger-length patterns linked to higher estrogen exposure before birth ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...