In 2024, a group of paleontologists journeyed into the dry, sandy desert of northern Egypt in search of fossils in a valley called Wadi Moghra. Scientists had previously found ancient monkey remains ...

Life on Earth began in a way that still boggles the mind. Around 4.5 billion years ago, a chemical process called abiogenesis occurred, where life emerged from non-life. Imagine a hot, watery mix of ...

The pelvis is often called the keystone of upright locomotion. More than any other part of our lower body, it has been radically altered over millions of years to allow us to accomplish our bizarre ...

Instead of hunting big game or wielding fire, the hobbit-like hominin Homo floresiensis likely scavenged leftovers of prey ...

Humans are the only primates with a chin, leaving biologists to wonder why we acquired this unique feature. According to a new analysis of head anatomy in apes, it probably didn’t evolve for a ...

On Valentine’s Day in 2018, a team of scientists walked across a flat expanse in the badlands of northeastern Ethiopia, scanning the ground for fossils. An eagle-eyed field assistant, Omar Abdulla, ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. Why do we kiss? The answer involves ancient apes, immune ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. Deep inside a limestone cave in northern Spain, researchers ...

We humans have long viewed ourselves as the pinnacle of evolution. People label other species as "primitive" or "ancient" and use terms like "higher" and "lower" animals. This anthropocentric ...

Researchers say a tiny one-eyed ancestor that lived nearly 600 million years ago may have shaped the evolution of every vertebrate eye, including our own. They also found that its ancient median eye ...