A new study theorizes that evolution ticks at different speeds, especially when a big group of organisms first appears.

A few days before they were to submit a scientific paper together, an evolutionary biologist in Europe received an unexpected request from two co-authors in the United States. After much thought, the ...

Yet modern biology has revealed that cells are preternaturally sophisticated assemblages — literally automated, miniaturized factories. How could the evidence have been overwhelming but now orthodoxy ...

Darwinian thinking has been challenged many times, starting with co-discoverer of natural selection Alfred Russel Wallace, who disagreed with some aspects of Charles Darwin’s arguments, but was ...

This is an extract from Our Human Story, our newsletter about the revolution in archaeology. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every month. If I tried to recap all the new fossils, new methods and ...

Researchers have identified a previously unknown giant virus that may offer new insight into how complex life first evolved.

For more than half a century, many biologists have leaned on the neutral theory of molecular evolution to explain how DNA and proteins change over time. The idea grew from early work in the 1960s, ...

If you've ever watched a documentary about the history of life on Earth, chances are you've heard the term "missing link." Applied to our own evolutionary story, it conjures a vivid image: a half-ape, ...

In nature, evolution takes years to sculpt new traits. In the lab, scientists hope to achieve this feat much faster: Being able to evolve proteins with enhanced or novel functions has important ...

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) -- Scientists have refused to participate in state Board of Education hearings this past week on how the theory of evolution should be treated in public schools, but they haven't ...

For more than a century, scientists have wondered why physical structures like blood vessels, neurons, tree branches, and ...