During these waves of mass extinction, most vertebrate survivors were confined to refugia, or isolated biodiversity hotspots ...

A new study by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology (MPI-EB) sheds fresh light on one of the most debated concepts in biology: evolvability. The work provides the first ...

A fish thought to be evolution’s time capsule just surprised scientists. A detailed dissection of the coelacanth — a 400-million-year-old species often called a “living fossil” — revealed that key ...

Researchers found that ancient hominids—including early humans—were exposed to lead throughout childhood, leaving chemical traces in fossil teeth. Experiments suggest this exposure may have driven ...

Inside a specially constructed safe at the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa sit the fragile remains of the world’s most celebrated human ancestor. She was once a hardy survivor in an ...

Cooking food is one of the activities that makes humanity unique. It's not just about what tastes good: advances in cooking technology have been a constant part of our progress, from the ability to ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: Directed evolution is a laboratory method that speeds up protein mutations to help create novel cancer and neurodegenerative disorder therapies. In a ...