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 ...

Learn how repeated burn injuries may have acted as a form of natural selection, influencing human genes linked to healing and immune response.

New research suggests fire was key to making our bodies successful in evolution – but not in the ways we previously thought.

A digital reconstruction of a million-year-old skull suggests humans may have diverged from our ancient ancestors 400,000 years earlier than thought and in Asia, not Africa, a study found. The ...

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 ...

For decades, the dominant theory in human evolution suggested that modern humans descended from a single ancestral lineage in Africa. However, groundbreaking new research from the University of ...

Fossils unearthed in Ethiopia are reshaping our view of human evolution. Instead of a straight march from ape-like ancestors to modern humans, researchers now see a tangled, branching tree with ...

A new analysis argues that this daily work of processing and cooking food helped reshape human bodies and social life. It explores how fire, tools, and cooperation driven by women changed humans’ ...

Scientists have proposed a new form of ancient humans. The Juluren, or "large head people," reportedly lived in eastern Asia over 100,000 years ago. Paleoanthropologists Xiujie Wu and Christopher Bae ...

John Gowlett receives funding from PAST Africa and Wenner-Gren Foundation, and his work has previously been supported by The Leverhulme Trust. He is associated with a new series of podcasts on human ...