Humans and chimpanzees differ in only one percent of their DNA. Human accelerated regions (HARs) are parts of the genome with an unexpected amount of these differences. HARs were stable in mammals for millennia but quickly ...
Evolution
Jan 13, 2023
8
387
The question of what makes modern humans unique has long been a driving force for researchers. Comparisons with our closest relatives, the Neandertals, therefore provide fascinating insights. The increase in brain size, and ...
Evolution
Sep 8, 2022
3
584
One of the best ways to study human evolution is by comparing us with nonhuman species that, evolutionarily speaking, are closely related to us. That closeness can help scientists narrow down precisely what makes us human, ...
Biotechnology
Mar 17, 2021
3
1985
Compared with the rest of the animal kingdom, mammals have the biggest brains and produce some of the smallest litters of offspring. A newly described fossil of an extinct mammal relative—and her 38 babies—is among the ...
Archaeology
Aug 29, 2018
0
214
A new study from the George Washington University's Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology (CASHP) found that whereas brain size evolved at different rates for different species, especially during the evolution ...
Evolution
Jan 2, 2017
2
1071
Nature vs. nurture has long been one of the great debates in science—is behavior hard-wired into the brain, or determined by environment? In at least some cases, Harvard researchers are showing, how animals behave is in ...
Plants & Animals
Jan 16, 2013
1
0
A series of rapid environmental changes in East Africa roughly 2 million years ago may be responsible for driving human evolution, according to researchers at Penn State and Rutgers University.
Earth Sciences
Dec 24, 2012
61
0
(Phys.org) -- One of the world’s most important fossils has a story to tell about the brain evolution of modern humans and their ancestors, according to Florida State University evolutionary anthropologist Dean Falk.
Archaeology
May 7, 2012
11
0
An interdisciplinary team of researchers led by biologists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently published the results of a first-of-its-kind study investigating the links between gene expression and brain evolution ...
Evolution
Mar 28, 2024
0
270
It's one of the great paradoxes of evolution. Humans have demonstrated that having large brains are key to our evolutionary success, and yet such brains are extremely rare in other animals. Most get by on tiny brains, and ...
Evolution
Dec 14, 2023
0
63
