A million-year-old skull from China, Yunxian 2, reshapes our understanding of human origins and ancient human relatives.

The findings have the potential to resolve the longstanding "Muddle in the Middle" of human evolution, researchers said.

Lead exposure may have spelled evolutionary success for humans—and extinction for our ancient cousins—but other scientists ...

When scientists found the skull, named Yunxian 2, they assumed it belonged to an earlier ancestor of ours, Homo erectus, the ...

In 1758, Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus gave humans a scientific name: Homo sapiens, which means "wise human" in Latin. Although Linnaeus grouped humans with other apes, it was English biologist ...

Researchers digitally reconstructed a crushed skull and concluded our species is 1 million years old, igniting a debate over ...

If we look across the whole of the mammal branch of the tree of life, we find there are many groups of mammals that have ...

Researchers say the analysis suggests Homo sapiens may have emerged at least half a million years earlier than previously thought. The skull, known as Yunxian 2, was discovered in Hubei Province ...

A digital reconstruction of a million-year-old skull suggests humans may have diverged from our ancient ancestors 400 000 ...

Our brains evolved for complex thought and language - but the same genes that made us smarter may have increased mental illness risk.

Long before industry, our ancestors faced toxic metals, including lead. This exposure may have shaped the evolution of human ...

An international study changes the view that exposure to the toxic metal lead is largely a post-industrial phenomenon. The ...