Human evolution is often told as a tidy story of adaptation, yet some of our most familiar body parts still defy straightforward explanation. From the jut of the human chin to the curve of the outer ...

Scientists have uncovered new evidence suggesting that autism may have it roots in how the human brain has evolved. "Our results suggest that some of the same genetic changes that make the human brain ...

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may be the result of millions of years of evolution. Rapid neuronal evolution in humans is likely ASD’s genetic cause, new research suggests. Though autism can cause ...

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, ...

A paper in Molecular Biology and Evolution finds that the relatively high rate of autism-spectrum disorders in humans is likely due to how humans evolved in the past. The paper is titled "A general ...

Scientists working in Ethiopia's Afar Region have made discoveries that rewrite our understanding of early human history. For ...

Human evolution’s biggest mystery, which emerged 15 years ago from a 60,000-year-old pinkie finger bone, finally started to unravel in 2025. Analysis of DNA extracted from the fossil electrified the ...

Researchers discovered that autism’s prevalence may be linked to human brain evolution. Specific neurons in the outer brain evolved rapidly, and autism-linked genes changed under natural selection.

This is an extract from Our Human Story, our newsletter about the revolution in archaeology. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every month. If I tried to recap all the new fossils, new methods and ...

In 1758, Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus gave humans a scientific name: Homo sapiens, which means "wise human" in Latin. Although Linnaeus grouped humans with other apes, it was English biologist ...

Shaw Badenhorst works for the University of the Witwatersrand. He receives funding from GENUS, the National Research Foundation and the Palaeontological Scientific Trust. South Africa has one of the ...