Evolution, features and articles | Educational Science

Jul 13, 2018

Early Humans Probably Didn't Evolve from a Single Population in Africa

Homo sapiens are incredibly diverse — we live in wildly different societies, follow different rules and love and fear different gods. Despite that awesome diversity, mounting evidence suggests the first humans were even more different from one another than we are today. In a new commentary published online on Wednesday...

Aug 30, 2018

How Did Opium Poppies Get Their Painkilling Properties?

Humans have been turning to the poppy plant to get high or relieve pain for thousands of years. And despite all our other staggering pharmaceutical progress, our reliance on the plant hasn't changed much; poppies are used to make two of the world's most widely used painkillers, morphine and codeine,...

Oct 3, 2018

Chemistry Nobel Awarded to Scientists for Taking the Reins on Evolution

Every living organism on this planet is a sculpture of evolution. Now, evolution is also unfolding in the lab. This year's Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to three scientists for their work in harnessing the power of evolution for a variety of applications that benefit humankind. These new applications...

Oct 11, 2018

Puppy-Size Roaches (and Other Bizarre Creatures) Pop Up in 'Beyond the Sixth Extinction'

In a toxic urban landscape of the future, what strange (and still oddly familiar) animals might have evolved to survive there? A new book, Beyond the Sixth Extinction: A Post-Apocalyptic Pop-Up (Candlewick Press) by Shawn Sheehy, artfully imagines the grotesque creatures that could live in a possible future — one...

Nov 29, 2018

Neanderthals and Humans Were Hooking Up Way More Than Anyone Thought

Way more sex happened between Neanderthals and the ancestors of modern humans across Europe and Asia than scientists originally thought, a new study finds. Scientists initially thought that interbreeding among the two groups was more isolated to a particular place and time — specifically, when they encountered each other in...

Dec 20, 2018

Brain of Mysterious 'Little Foot' Human Relative Was Half-Man, Half-Ape

The brain of one of the oldest Australopithecus individuals ever found was a little bit ape-like and a little bit human. In a new study, researchers scanned the interior of a very rare, nearly complete skull of this ancient hominin ancestor. Hominins include modern and extinct humans and all their...

Jan 26, 2019

Could Evolution Ever Bring Back the Dinosaurs?

Did you watch the 1993 movie blockbuster Jurassic Park and wonder, Could this happen for real? Could the dinosaurs ever come back? The idea that these mighty creatures could wander our Earth again some day is for most humans both fascinating and terrifying in equal measure. Even real-life scientists are...

Feb 6, 2019

Humans Are Eating Most of Earth's Largest Animals to Extinction

It's hard to argue that the world is not made more interesting by singing whales the size of school buses, dinosaur-footed bird monsters that can leap clean over your head or slimy, cannibal salamanders that grow as large as crocodiles. Giant animals like these are known as megafauna. Beyond being...

Mar 23, 2019

How smart were Neanderthals?

When geologist William King introduced a new species of human, Homo neanderthalensis, to the European scientific community in 1864, he wasn't very generous toward our extinct evolutionary cousins. I feel myself constrained to believe that the thoughts and desires which once dwelt within it never soared beyond those of a...

Apr 11, 2019

This Newfound Extinct Human Lineage Also Mated with Modern Humans

A newfound extinct human lineage that lived in New Guinea interbred with modern humans, a new study finds. This lineage's genetic differences from other humans made it as distinct a group as our closest extinct relatives, the Neanderthals and Denisovans, scientists added. Although modern humans are now the only living...

Apr 19, 2019

This Tiny Knee Bone Had Nearly Vanished As Humans Evolved. It's Coming Back

A tiny bone hidden in the tendon of the knee started to disappear over the course of human evolution ... or so scientists thought. Now, a new study finds that this so-called fabella (Latin for little bean) is making a comeback. The bone, which is a sesamoid bone, or one...

Jun 14, 2019

Humans Are Growing Weird, Bone Spikes on Their Skulls. Smartphones May Be the Culprit.

Editor’s Note: On Sept. 18, the authors of this “skull spikes” research published corrections to their study in the journal Scientific Reports. They noted that rather than finding “a direct link” between the formation of the skull spikes and poor posture due to the use of cell phones and tablets,...

Oct 22, 2019

Humans May Be the Only Intelligent Life in the Universe, If Evolution Has Anything to Say

Are we alone in the universe? It comes down to whether intelligence is a probable outcome of natural selection, or an improbable fluke. By definition, probable events occur frequently, improbable events occur rarely — or once. Our evolutionary history shows that many key adaptations — not just intelligence, but complex...

Mar 5, 2020

New drugs could stymie superbugs by freezing evolution

Scientists may have uncovered a new weapon in the fight against antibiotic-resistant superbugs: drugs that freeze bacterial evolution in its tracks. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are those microbes that somehow survive even under the onslaught from megadrugs meant to kill them. Every year, at least 2.8 million people in the U.S. catch...

Jul 9, 2020

The electric hum of life may have originated with primordial lightning

Editor's Note: This story was updated on Thursday, July 9 at 11 a.m. ET. There's an electrical hum in most animals, including ourselves. No one knows where it came from or why exactly it exists. Now, new research suggests this electric hum came from primordial lightning. In most vertebrates and...