Scientists have uncovered a surprising new picture of human origins that challenges the long-held idea of a single ancestral population in Africa. By analyzing genetic data from diverse modern African ...

Malaria may have shaped early human life across Africa far earlier than once thought, steering where people could safely live and when groups stayed apart. By tracing ancient mosquito habitats, ...

A remarkable discovery in South Africa's Rising Star caves unveiled Homo Naledi, an extinct human ancestor. The inaccessible chambers yielded numerous fossils, sparking debate about their deposition ...

To celebrate the groundbreaking research of 2025 Drake Award recipients Dr. David Deamer and Dr. John Baross, the SETI Institute commissioned bioartist Dr. Jennifer Willet to create a unique artwork ...

Across the world, humans have told stories of creatures so strange and powerful they blur the line between myth and reality. Some may be echoes of ancient animals long extinct, while others reflect ...

For decades, scientists assumed that life on Earth emerged through a chain of highly improbable flukes. But a new theory suggests it may have instead arrived just in time. The emergence of human life ...

Scientists are exploring ways to mimic the origins of human life without two fundamental components: sperm and egg. They are coaxing clusters of stem cells – programmable cells that can transform into ...

Scenarios in human evolution : science or fiction? -- Guidelines for modeling human evolution -- Who were our ancestors? -- Origins of human subsistence -- Origins of bipedalism -- Origins of human ...

For the first time, scientists have reconstructed ancient genomes of Human betaherpesvirus 6A and 6B (HHV-6A/B) from archaeological human remains more than two millennia old. The study, led by the ...

In this week's Short Wave roundup, Berly McCoy and Regina Barber talk about the origins of life on Earth, what bird brains illuminate about human speech and how ADHD is mischaracterized on TikTok.