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 ...

He lived hundreds of thousands of years ago, eking out an existence in what is today central China. Sporting a squat neck and a big brain, he likely wielded tools made of stone and hunted or scavenged ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...