1+ week, 5+ day ago   (521+ words) Wild monkeys in West Africa can climb vertical tree trunks using foot flexibility scientists did not realize they possessed. The discovery challenges a key assumption about what the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees looked like and how it…...

1+ week, 6+ day ago   (819+ words) A remarkable set of fossil footprints from northern Kenya is offering scientists a rare glimpse of how an extinct human relative may have moved and interacted about 1.4 million years ago. The tracks, preserved near an ancient lakeshore, appear to record…...

2+ week, 3+ day ago   (325+ words) DNA from a nearly 190-year-old museum specimen has helped scientists confirm a distinct Himalayan pangolin species hiding in plain sight in Nepal and northern India. The discovery could give conservationists a powerful new way to trace illegally traded pangolin scales…...

2+ week, 4+ day ago   (521+ words) A sweeping analysis of thousands of animal genomes suggests that chromosomes do not evolve randomly but instead follow a limited number of irreversible “evolutionary highways.” These one-way genetic changes preserve clues to more than 600 million years of animal history and…...

3+ week, 2+ day ago   (576+ words) New research from Monash University suggests that recent discoveries about human evolution are challenging the traditional system scientists use to name and classify our ancestors. The research, published in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology, calls for a major reconsideration…...