Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. Fossil discoveries unlock chapters of our planet’s storied ...

Q: Why do we humans have a hard time understanding, and sometimes accepting, evolution? What, in your opinion, is the major stumbling block? A: Deep time is hard to grasp. I don't know that it or any ...

One hundred years ago, a substitute teacher in Dayton, Tenn., was charged with the crime of teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. His name was John Scopes. At the time, ...

South Africa has one of the world’s richest fossil records of hominins (humans and their fossil ancestors). But many misconceptions still exist regarding human evolution, and school textbooks contain ...

The history of the first plant on Earth is not as simple as the identification of a particular species of plants, but it is a long history of evolution that started in the water and changed the planet ...

Paleontologists who study earth’s ancient fossil record might not seem to be the obvious choice when asking about the prevalence of intelligent life in the cosmos. But paleontology, the study of ...

Researchers at the University of Maine are theorizing that human beings may be in the midst of a major evolutionary shift—driven not by genes, but by culture. "Human evolution seems to be changing ...