All species on Earth, both living and extinct, are related. We know this because of a biological tool called the tree of life. This "tree" takes the form of a diagram that maps the relationships ...

A newly discovered primate fossil is crucial for illuminating a pivotal event in primate and human evolution--the divergence between the lineage leading to modern monkeys, apes, and humans ...

Citation: Baum, D. (2008) Trait evolution on a phylogenetic tree: Relatedness, similarity, and the myth of evolutionary advancement. Nature Education 1 (1):191 What do phylogenetic trees illustrate?

South Africa has one of the world's richest fossil records of hominins (humans and their fossil ancestors). But many misconceptions still exist regarding human evolution, and school textbooks ...

At the most basic level, human evolution is articulated through classifications of, and evolutionary relationships among, hominin species. This article presents a basic taxonomy and phylogeny of ...

The human body is a machine whose many parts—from the microscopic details of our cells to our limbs, eyes, liver and brain—have been assembled in fits and starts over the 4 billion years of our ...

Evolutionary diagrams usually connect humans and monkeys with common primate ancestors, but now, scientists say there’s a missing link that deserves a spot on that family tree – our bacteria ...

The discovery of Lucy, a 3.2 million-year-old skeleton, changed our theory of human evolution forever. The discovery is celebrating its 50-year anniversary, and continues to capture human imagination.

An ancient skull dating back 300,000 years is unlike any other premodern human fossil ever found, potentially pointing to a new branch in the human family tree, according to new research.

About 3.8 million years ago, a distant human relative took his final steps. Swept into a river delta, his head was buried in sand that, over time, hardened into a stone helmet. The skull ...