Evolution

Losing a tail on human's evolutionary branch may have been caused by a rare kind of mutation resulting from parasitic, self-replicating DNA.

After generating 187 new genomes from primate species, researchers found a large fraction of the human genome that is highly conserved across evolution.

Researchers have discovered that one of humanity’s closest relatives also experiences menopause, contradicting a popular hypothesis about the evolutionary origins of this process.

In a recent study from UCSF and MIT, researchers found that they could identify evolutionary differences in biological function by comparing the results of CRISPR screens in humans and chimpanzees.

No one can escape aging. But scientists have found that turtles and tortoises live much longer and barely age compared to humans and other animals.

A new look at the louse family tree has revealed that many lice hosted by mammals, including the human head louse, have coevolved with mammals over tens of millions of years.

by Misha Guptafigures by Xiaomeng Han For close to two centuries, humans have been studying the biological past using fossil records. In recent history, we have added the ability to reconstruct the sequence of our DNA to our arsenal. Furthermore,…

Scientists have characterized a component of bull ant venom that causes hypersensitivity to touch and heat in mammals

by Piyush Nandafigures by Corena Loeb Around 600 million years ago, single-celled life transitioned to multicellular life forms, begetting a paradigm shift in the definition of life on earth. This was an event so remarkable in earth’s timeline that it…

A new study shows that some lizards can use air bubbles to breathe underwater.