They’re not monkeying around with this breakthrough. Researchers from New York University Langone Health may have finally learned how early humans took a major step away from predecessor primates in ...

The human tailbone, also known as the coccyx, is a vestigial feature, meaning it has lost its original function in the body over the course of evolution. The human tailbone is a leftover feature from ...

Early in pregnancy, something surprising happens. Every human embryo develops a tail. It is not symbolic or imagined. A real extension forms at the base of the spine, complete with vertebrae. Later, ...

Humans do not have tails, but do we have “what it takes” for a tail? Hens don’t have teeth, but they have the genes for it. With atavism, it is as if our genomes serve as archives of our evolutionary ...

A genetic change in our ancient ancestors may partly explain why humans don't have tails like monkeys, finds a new study led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Published online ...

John Gowlett receives funding from PAST Africa and Wenner-Gren Foundation, and his work has previously been supported by The Leverhulme Trust. He is associated with a new series of podcasts on human ...

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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 ...

Fossils unearthed in Ethiopia are reshaping our view of human evolution. Instead of a straight march from ape-like ancestors to modern humans, researchers now see a tangled, branching tree with ...

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 ...

More than a decade after the first Neanderthal genome was sequenced, scientists are still working to understand how human-specific DNA changes shaped human evolution. It's just over a decade since ...