Researchers deciphered genetic data to discover two distinct settler groups dispersed into what is now New Guinea and Australia. The data supports the “long chronology” view that modern humans arrived ...

University of Michigan researchers have developed a statistical method that can be used for such wide-ranging applications as tracing your ancestry, modeling disease spread and studying how animals ...

Lucy's position in the history of human evolution is currently being challenged. The Lucy fossil species, or Australopithecus afarensis, was long believed to be an ancestor species that humans ...

Scientists uncover an unknown human lineage that survived beyond the last ice age, reshaping the story of ancient human ...

Thin stretches of the human X chromosome look oddly empty when you scan for Neanderthal DNA. Geneticists even have a name for the gaps: “Neanderthal deserts.” They sit there like blank tape in an ...

Most people alive today carry fragments of Neanderthal DNA in their genome. Now scientists are gaining a more intimate understanding of the ancient encounters that put it there. By Carl Zimmer One of ...

At the turn of the century, the biomedical research community saw a landmark global effort, when scientists built a reference human genome sequence to better understand the genes underlying health and ...

Around 2% of modern humans carry Neanderthal DNA, meaning we know early humans got super intimate with our now-extinct relatives. According to new research, when Neanderthals and humans did hit it off ...

The hot debate over just how—and when—the human population in what is now Australia and New Guinea formed took a major step toward the “long chronology” camp with new research claiming that genetic ...