Editor's note: All opinions, columns and letters reflect the views of the individual writer and not necessarily those of the IDS or its staffers. We’ve all seen this poster in our middle school ...

Scientists have traced the evolutionary origin of humans' outer ears to the gills of ancient fish through a series of gene-editing experiments. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn ...

A living fossil fish just proved we've misunderstood a major chapter in the story of evolution. For decades, the coelacanth — an ancient fish species that first appeared 400 million years ago — was ...

Human evolution is not a straight line but a complex branching tree shared with other great apes. This overview explains the distinction between hominids and hominins and traces the evolutionary ...

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 ...

This is an extract from Our Human Story, our newsletter about the revolution in archaeology. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every month. If I tried to recap all the new fossils, new methods and ...

Yes, people really do underestimate the cognitive abilities of fish. Study co-lead author, Maëlan Tomasek, with a fish “volunteer” in the behavioral experiment ...

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 ...