In paleoanthropology, a rare, nearly-complete skeleton can rewrite entire chapters of the human origin story. The “Little Foot,” fossil an exquisitely preserved hominin found in South Africa’s ...

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.

One of the most complete human ancestor fossils ever found may belong to an entirely new species, according to an ...

This has been quite the wild year in human evolution stories. Our relatives, living and extinct, got a lot of attention—from ...

The extinct ancient human Homo erectus is a species of firsts. It was the first of our relatives to have human-like body proportions, with shorter arms and longer legs relative to its torso. It was ...

Revolutionary fossil evidence from Ethiopia is challenging decades of scientific consensus about human origins. New discoveries suggest that the famous Lucy fossil, long considered a direct ancestor ...

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or ...

Explore Neanderthal facts, from looks to lifestyle and abilities. These early humans are far more similar to us than once believed. Wanting to understand who we are, where we come from and how we ...

Skull finds can change the way we think about human origins — but often not without controversy. Much of the new research involves high-tech analysis of fragmentary fossils or genetic code — but no ...

The human genome has finally been completely mapped, 20 years after the first draft was produced, scientists have revealed. Today, researchers have published a gap-free sequence of roughly 3 billion ...

A new Yale study provides a fuller picture of the genetic changes that shaped the evolution of the human brain, and how the process differed from the evolution of chimpanzees. For the study, published ...