In this search for the origin of one of the world’s most common genetic diseases, emerging research in evolutionary medicine raises new questions about our history, development, and future as a species.
Archaeologists have discovered eight extremely well-preserved spears that are an astonishing 300,000 years old, making them the oldest known weapons ever found. They probably belonged to members of the species homo heidelbergensis, although no human remains have yet been found at the site. Homo heidelbergensis lived throughout the Old World between 600,000 and 300,000 years…
Geologists have long predicted that North and South America will eventually fuse together and merge with Asia, forming a new supercontinent along the lines of the ancient Pangea — the precursor to today’s great land masses, which separated about 200 million years ago. In the past, researchers had guessed that the new continent, often called…
Behind every great man, the saying goes, there’s a great woman. And behind every sperm, there may be an X chromosome gene. In humans, the Y chromosome makes men, men, or so researchers have thought: It contains genes that are responsible for sex determination, male development, and male fertility. But now a team has discovered…
Planets form more commonly in star systems with relatively high concentrations of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, a new study suggests. Such heavier elements are necessary to form the dust grains and planetesimals that build planetary cores, according to the study, which was carried out by researchers Jarrett Johnson and Hui Li of Los…
The tip of a girl’s 40,000-year-old pinky finger found in a cold Siberian cave, paired with faster and cheaper genetic sequencing technology, is helping scientists draw a surprisingly complex new picture of human origins. The new view is fast supplanting the traditional idea that modern humans triumphantly marched out of Africa about 50,000 years ago,…
Billions of times the mass of our own sun, so-called massive black holes present a baffling mystery with clues hidden at the very dawn of existence.