Origin story: Rewriting human history through DNA

For most of our evolutionary history—for most of the time anatomically modern humans have been on Earth—we've shared the planet with other species of humans. It's only been in the last 30,000 years, the mere blink of ...

What fossils reveal about hybridization of early humans

Many people living today have a small component of Neanderthal DNA in their genes, suggesting an important role for admixture with archaic human lineages in the evolution of our species. Paleogenetic evidence indicates that ...

Humans in America '115,000 years earlier than thought'

High-tech dating of mastodon remains found in southern California has shattered the timeline of human migration to America, pushing the presence of hominins back to 130,000 years ago rather than just 15,000 years, researchers ...

Enzyme corrects more than one million faults in DNA replication

Scientists from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine (IGMM) at the University of Edinburgh have discovered an enzyme that corrects the most common mistake in mammalian DNA.

Their stories were lost to slavery. Now DNA is writing them

In the 1700s, a boy was born into slavery in Colonial America. He spent his life working in the coastal city of Charleston, South Carolina. And when he died in middle age, he was buried alongside 35 other slaves.

Ancient DNA from Sardinia reveals 6,000 years of genetic history

A new study of the genetic history of Sardinia, a Mediterranean island off the western coast of Italy, tells how genetic ancestry on the island was relatively stable through the end of the Bronze Age, even as mainland Europe ...

Genes for face shape identified

Genes that determine the shape of a person's facial profile have been discovered by a UCL-led research team.

Biologists construct a 'periodic table' for cell nuclei

One hundred fifty years ago, Dmitri Mendeleev created the periodic table, a system for classifying atoms based on the properties of their nuclei. This week, a team of biologists studying the tree of life has unveiled a new ...

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