Human Evolution

The heads of human ancestors like Australopithecus afarensis may have evolved to better withstand blows to the face.

Were Ancient Humans Built for Boxing?

Males may have bigger bones and stronger jaws to better withstand getting hit in the face

He makes it look so easy.

Humans Gave Up Our Strength to Support Our Big Heads

Evolution may have traded muscle mass for big brains

Atlas V Launches the New Horizons Mission to Pluto.

Take a Peek Into the Future's Present With Our Live Coverage of Smithsonian's Two-Day Festival

The magazine's 2nd annual conference brings together experts, authors and visionaries in the fields of science, science fiction and technology.

Diver Susan Bird works at the bottom of Hoyo Negro, a large dome-shaped underwater cave on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. She carefully brushes the human skull found at the site while her team members take detailed photographs.

DNA From 12,000-Year-Old Skeleton Helps Answer the Question: Who Were the First Americans?

In 2007, cave divers discovered remains that form the oldest, most complete and genetically intact human skeleton in the New World

Why Don’t Chimpanzees Have Long, Luscious Locks?

Why doesn't animal fur grow like human hair?

A hyper realistic reconstruction of an Australopithecus africanus based on cast of the skull STS5 (nicknamed "Mrs Ples") discovered in 1947 in Sterkfontein, South Africa. The fossil STS5 is between 2.1 and 2.7 million years old.

Paleoartist Brings Human Evolution to Life

For Elisabeth Daynès, sculpting ancient humans and their ancestors is both an art and a science

What "Peak Beard" Says About Human Sexual Selection

Being sexy means standing out

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If You Like Gore, You'll Like Watching This Eyeball Get Dissected

Mind the eye juice

Knife throwing: a place you want to be pretty accurate.

One Thing Humans Are Better Than Other Species At: Throwing

The next time you angrily throw something across the room, appreciate that you’re exercising a pretty unique human ability

Happisburgh, a stretch of southeastern British coast that's one of the country's fastest eroding spots.

The Oldest Human Footprints Ever Discovered Outside of Africa Have Already Been Washed Away

Casts and computer images are all that's of footprints made 900,000 years ago on the British coast

Attractive Cyclists Are More Likely to Win Races

Endurance might be correlated with how attractive we find someone, new research suggests

One of the ancient human fossils found in Spain's La Sima de los Huesos.

Scientists Just Sequenced the DNA From A 400,000-Year-Old Early Human

The fossil, found in Spain, is mysteriously related to an ancient group of homonins called the Denisovans, previously found only in Siberia

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Top 7 Human Evolution Discoveries From South Africa

The search for humans' most ancient ancestors began in South Africa, where some of paleoanthropology's most iconic fossils have been found

From hiccups to wisdom teeth, our own bodies are worse off than most because of the differences between the wilderness in which we evolved and the modern world in which we live.

The Top Ten Daily Consequences of Having Evolved

From hiccups to wisdom teeth, the evolution of man has left behind some glaring, yet innately human, imperfections

Ardi (right) lived in a forest in Africa. Her fossil skeleton shows that she walked upright and yet had an opposable toe, good for climbing trees.

The Human Family's Earliest Ancestors

Studies of hominid fossils, like 4.4-million-year-old "Ardi," are changing ideas about human origins

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The Tragic Tale of the Pygmy in the Zoo

In 1904, several Pygmies were brought to live in the anthropology exhibit at the St. Louis World's Fair

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Animal Insight

Recent studies illustrate which traits humans and apes have in common—and which they don't

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Wild Things: Life As We Know It

Human behavior, primate intelligence, meal planning, tree-dwelling orchids and detangling history

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Testimony from the Iceman

The 5,000-plus-year-old Neolithic man discovered a decade ago is telling scientists how he lived and died

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