Smithsonian Magazine on MSN
The Top Human Evolution Discoveries of 2025, From the Intriguing Neanderthal Diet to the Oldest Western European Face Fossil
This has been quite the wild year in human evolution stories. Our relatives, living and extinct, got a lot of attention—from ...
Human evolution’s biggest mystery, which emerged 15 years ago from a 60,000-year-old pinkie finger bone, finally started to unravel in 2025.
For decades, the dominant theory in human evolution suggested that modern humans descended from a single ancestral lineage in Africa. However, groundbreaking new research from the University of ...
Fossils unearthed in Ethiopia are reshaping our view of human evolution. Instead of a straight march from ape-like ancestors to modern humans, researchers now see a tangled, branching tree with ...
Ten fossil teeth belong to new Australopithecus species Found in Afar Region, they are 2.65 million years old This species coexisted with an early Homo species Fossils underscore complex nature of ...
The (un)lucky fossil, now known as Kabwe 1, represents a turning point at a time when Africa was considered peripheral to the story of human evolution. A century later, it’s widely accepted that the ...
Researchers found that ancient hominids—including early humans—were exposed to lead throughout childhood, leaving chemical traces in fossil teeth. Experiments suggest this exposure may have driven ...
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 ...
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