A vast stretch of islands across the South Pacific holds one of the oldest human stories on Earth. For tens of thousands of ...

For decades, large stretches of human DNA were dismissed as "junk" and considered to serve no real purpose. In a new study published in Cell Genomics, researchers at Lund University in Sweden show ...

The human genome is made up of 23 pairs of chromosomes, the biological blueprints that make humans … well, human. But it turns out that some of our DNA — about 8% — are the remnants of ancient viruses ...

A massive study of ancient DNA from nearly 16,000 people across more than 10,000 years in West Eurasia reveals that natural selection has shaped modern human genomes far more than previously thought.

A series of new studies have transformed understanding of Neanderthal life, interactions with Homo sapiens, and human evolution. DNA from Poland’s Stajnia Cave reveals a rare, 100,000-year-old ...

Ancient encounters between humans and the mysterious Denisovans are still shaping people today. By analyzing genomes from populations across the Pacific, researchers uncovered evidence that the ...

Pigment sampling at a claviform rock art figure in Tebellín, Spain. (Alberto Martínez Villa/Bossoms Mesa et al., Nat. Commun.

A tiny set of ancient genetic “switches” may have played a surprisingly large role in making human language possible. Researchers found that these DNA regions, which act like volume controls for genes ...

Human evolution’s biggest mystery, which emerged 15 years ago from a 60,000-year-old pinkie finger bone, finally started to unravel in 2025. Analysis of DNA extracted from the fossil electrified the ...

Some of your most important life partners are the mitochondria that power all your cells. You and these little cellular powerhouses are in a 1.5-billion-year-old evolutionary relationship—but ...