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Fossils
Tracing the origin and development of jaws — and other anatomical features that humans share — sheds some light on how we came to be.
There were many other species of human on the planet. Svante Pääbo discovered one of them.
Was our distant ancestor a biped or not – i.e., human or not human?
Sex can be a death trap even for modern toad and frog species.
The 557-million-year-old specimen challenges the theory that animal body plans were laid out in the Cambrian explosion.
Human beings are descendants of these early tetrapods – at least those who made a new life on land.
Horses pranced around the western hemisphere until they went extinct in the late Holocene. They were reintroduced by European colonists — though where, when, and how has remained unclear.
Mammals have a history stretching back 325 million years. To study that ancient history is to know our own origins.
Predatory dinosaurs with big skulls tend to have tiny arms. Researchers propose there might be a direct link between those traits.
New research finds that dinosaurs were already adapted to living in cold climates before the end-Triassic mass extinction. But how?
Fossils of Australopithecus in a South African cave are one million years older than previously thought. This challenges the consensus that humans first evolved in East Africa.
Yorkicystis lived during the “Cambrian explosion,” 539 million to 485 million years ago – hundreds of million years before the dinosaurs.
It's not about leaves in tall trees.
Was there an intelligent, technologically advanced species long before humans existed? Could there have been a dinosaur civilization?
The simulation gave researchers some of the first concrete data linking climate change to human evolution and speciation.
Archaic humans ventured into Eurasia in waves, not always successfully. They may have started their journey in North Africa or West Asia.
Scientists across a range of disciplines have helped solve Darwin's dilemma.
The way that the ancient Megalodon adapted to water temperature has important implications for modern marine creatures.
From crocodiles to birds, certain animals managed to survive some of the worst extinction events in world history.
Syllipsimopodi bideni is small (about 12cm in length), has ten arms, suckers, fins, and a triangular pen of hard tissue inside its body for support.
An ancient continent called Balkanatolia rose and fell in the area in and around what is now the eastern Mediterranean.
Was this a moment when humans interbred with Neanderthals?
A new analysis of an ancient hominin fossil sheds light on the "Out of Africa" dispersal events that occurred more than one million years ago.
Dating of volcanic ash suggests the remains are at least 230,000 years old.
What was this mammoth tusk doing on the ocean floor 150 miles from land?
Bears, chimps, or humans? A track of five poorly preserved footsteps at Laetoli has puzzled paleontologists for decades. Now, a research paper from Nature claims to have solved the mystery.
Purely physical and chemical processes can deceive us into thinking that life is present, when it actually is not.