Smithsonian Magazine on MSN
The Top Human Evolution Discoveries of 2025, From the Intriguing Neanderthal Diet to the Oldest Western European Face Fossil
This has been quite the wild year in human evolution stories. Our relatives, living and extinct, got a lot of attention—from ...
For over half a billion years, evolution has sculpted the nervous systems of bilaterian animals, equipping them with remarkable capabilities to process information, coordinate movements, and respond ...
Scientists uncover fossils suggesting Sahelanthropus tchadensis, a 7-million-year-old ancestor, could walk upright. Could this tiny bipedal ape-like hominin rewrite what we know about the earliest ...
To clarify the early evolutionary history of Cicadoidea fossils, the phylogenetic relationships between Mesozoic fossils and extant Cicadoidea, the macroevolution of body structure adaptations, and ...
The oldest fossilised remains of complex animals appear suddenly in the fossil record, and as if from nowhere, in rocks that ...
A stunning new fossil find from the Grand Canyon fills in some blanks from a time when evolution began experimenting with weird new forms. About half a billion years ago, life on Earth really started ...
In paleoanthropology, a rare, nearly-complete skeleton can rewrite entire chapters of the human origin story. The “Little ...
The evolution of some of the earliest complex animals on our planet may have been spurred on by other, simpler early animals. These simple marine animals first evolved around 560 million years ago and ...
Fossil insect find, Zekuforma maculata, reveals a land-to-water experiment in evolution, rewriting 230 million years of true bug history.
Some animals have been around since the time of the dinosaurs—and they’re still thriving today! Known as “living fossils,” ...
Learn how fossils form through sedimentation and mineralization. Discover types like moulds, casts, and trace fossils in our ...
Prothero, a geologist at Occidental College (After the Dinosaurs), explains how rich the fossil record has become. His goal is two-fold. First, he wants to demonstrate the wide variety of transitional ...
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