Poison frogs appear to have built their chemical defenses gradually: related frogs store low to moderate levels of ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 1950 the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi was discussing the possibility of intelligent alien life with his colleagues. If alien ...

A new study reveals the surprisingly convergent evolution in the inner ear of mammals. An international research team showed that a group of highly divergent mammals known as Afrotheria and distantly ...

A new suggestion that complexity increases over time, not just in living organisms but in the nonliving world, promises to rewrite notions of time and evolution. In 1950 the Italian physicist Enrico ...

Ghost sharks have evolved rows of true teeth on a bizarre forehead rod used for mating. Fossil and genetic evidence revealed the tenaculum’s teeth develop the same way as those inside the mouth, ...

A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by scientists from Israel and Ghana shows that an evolutionarily significant mutation in the human APOL1 gene arises not ...

In 1758, Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus gave humans a scientific name: Homo sapiens, which means "wise human" in Latin. Although Linnaeus grouped humans with other apes, it was English biologist ...

If you have spent time with an infant, you might recognize the scene: A child is wailing, inconsolable, and you, the parent, have to go to the bathroom. Or eat. Or attend to a pot that’s boiling over.

The plan was simple. Make a quick stop at a geologic feature that would provide a real-world example of topics that were being discussed in my biology classes. The topic was evolution and I was ...