Did modern humans erase Neanderthals, or did our close cousins fade away for reasons that had little to do with us? A pair of major papers in Science and Nature on Dec. 12, 2024, sharpen that question ...

A complex picture of how Neanderthals died out, and the role that modern humans played in their disappearance, is emerging.

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A series of lower jaws from North Africa demonstrates variation among hominin fossils. The jaw on ...

Lead exposure has been thought to be a uniquely modern phenomenon. Exposure to lead by ancient humans could have given modern humans a survival advantage over other species – more specifically, their ...

Many people today simply assume that our evolution has quietly ended with the development of the modern human. It's easy to think that medicine, science, and modern living have made us "perfect" or ...

(CNN) — Modern humans are evolutionary survivors, thriving generation after generation while our ancient relatives died out. Now, new research into our brain chemistry suggests that an enzyme unique ...

Denisovans, a mysterious human relative, left behind far more than a handful of fossils—they left genetic fingerprints in modern humans across the globe. Multiple interbreeding events with distinct ...

A new Simon Fraser University-led study reveals interbreeding between humans and their ancient cousins, Neanderthals, as the likely origin of a neurological condition estimated to impact up to one per ...

Learn how the chin became an evolutionary byproduct that's unique to humans.

Researchers studied ancient tooth fossils and found that a gene mutation in modern humans (right) better protected them against lead and gave them an advantage over Neanderthals (left). Kyle Dykes / ...