New plankton arrived just a few millennia — maybe even decades — after the Chicxulub asteroid, forcing a rethink of evolution ...

Human newborns arrive remarkably underdeveloped. The reason lies in a deep evolutionary trade-off between big brains, bipedalism and the limits of motherhood.

Life on Earth began in a way that still boggles the mind. Around 4.5 billion years ago, a chemical process called abiogenesis ...

The evolution of the lung represents a compelling chapter in evolutionary developmental biology, highlighting the intricate interplay between genetic mechanisms and environmental pressures during the ...

There are few forms of the botanical world as readily identifiable as fern leaves. These often large, lacy fronds lend themselves nicely to watercolor paintings and tricep tattoos alike. Thoreau said ...

A new study by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology (MPI-EB) sheds fresh light on one of the most debated concepts in biology: evolvability. The work provides the first ...

Environmental change doesn’t affect evolution in a single, predictable way. In large-scale computer simulations, scientists discovered that some fluctuating conditions help populations evolve higher ...

Bears look like textbook mammals, but hidden in their evolutionary history are two dramatic departures from the standard blueprint of growth and adaptation. For the first time, scientists have ...

The evolution of the human species is marked by an increase in brain size. Now new research suggests that could be partly dependent on increases in prenatal estrogen—revealed by looking at the length ...