This has been quite the wild year in human evolution stories. Our relatives, living and extinct, got a lot of attention—from ...

Human evolution’s biggest mystery, which emerged 15 years ago from a 60,000-year-old pinkie finger bone, finally started to ...

Human evolution is not a straight line but a complex branching tree shared with other great apes. This overview explains the ...

Revolutionary fossil evidence from Ethiopia is challenging decades of scientific consensus about human origins. New discoveries suggest that the famous Lucy fossil, long considered a direct ancestor ...

Our species is defined by a long list of cultural and genetic traits that set us apart from our ancient counterparts. New research suggests at least some key distinctions date back earlier than ...

Modern humans descended from not one, but at least two ancestral populations that drifted apart and later reconnected, long before modern humans spread across the globe. Using advanced analysis based ...

An experimental study of modern chimpanzees has documented patterns of behavior that seemingly mirror those of our prehistoric human ancestors, casting light on how our predecessors may have utilized ...

When studying how fossil hominids moved, researchers usually analyze the morphology of bones—which is crucial for understanding the evolution of bipedalism—focusing mainly on muscle insertion sites.

Smithsonian paleoanthropologists explore how the year brought us closer to understanding ancient human relatives and origins Ryan McRae and Briana Pobiner A young chimpanzee looks on during an outing ...

Ideas about the global dispersal of Homo sapiens have changed over time. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Modern humans now ...

Humans and our ancestors have been exposed to lead for 2 million years, but the toxic metal may have actually helped our species to develop language — giving us a key advantage over our Neanderthal ...