A potted scarlet monkeyflower would die within a few days without water. But multiple natural populations of the species ...

Most people know only two things about the appendix: You don’t need it – and if it bursts, you need surgery fast. That basic story traces back at least to Charles Darwin, the English naturalist who ...

Wild scarlet monkeyflowers in California survived a historic drought by relying on a rapid evolution, marking the first time the process has been observed in the wild.

A nearly complete dinosaur skeleton discovered in Patagonia is helping scientists crack the mystery of alvarezsaurs, a bizarre group of bird-like dinosaurs. The fossil of Alnashetri cerropoliciensis ...

In Lake Malawi, hundreds of species of cichlid fish have evolved with astonishing speed, offering scientists a rare opportunity to study how biodiversity arises.

Evolution is perhaps the most extraordinary story ever told—a tale spanning billions of years that connects every living thing on Earth through an intricate ...

As early humans spread from lush African forests into grasslands, their need for ready sources of energy led them to develop a taste for grassy plants, especially grains and the starchy plant tissue ...

The human body is a machine whose many parts – from the microscopic details of our cells to our limbs, eyes, liver and brain – have been assembled in fits and starts over the four billion years of our ...

Everyone’s seen Rudolph Zallinger’s “The March of Progress” illustration showcasing the evolution of humans: from early primate ape ancestor, Dryopithecus, and progressing toward modern man, Homo ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: Directed evolution is a laboratory method that speeds up protein mutations to help create novel cancer and neurodegenerative disorder therapies. In a ...

One hundred years ago a young teacher, John T. Scopes, went on trial in Dayton, Tenn., for violating a recently enacted state law that forbade the state’s educators “to teach any theory that denies ...