Michael Marshall

Some animals – and even machines – may turn out to be conscious. Must we wait for scientific certainty before sharing our rights, asks The Moral Circle

Many think dinosaurs first emerged on land well south of the equator that now forms part of Argentina and Zimbabwe, but they may have actually arisen in tougher conditions near the equator

Is 8 hours of sleep really the right amount for you? Understanding your personal chronotype could be a better way to approach how much time you should spend in bed

Volcanoes have been proposed as the reason for the extinctions of the Neanderthals and the hobbits of Indonesia

Some people have been living with long covid for five years, but we are still just starting to learn about its exact causes and how best to treat the condition

Recent findings show that Stonehenge’s stones came from all over Britain – and this offers clues to the monument’s purpose, say archaeologists

Eating disorders have increased - and many are pointing the finger at sites like Instagram and TikTok

The oldest genomes ever recovered from modern humans have helped pin down when and how the momentous mingling of two hominins played out

Leading archaeologists share the biggest recent advances in our understanding of human evolution, and their hopes for the exciting finds the next five years may have in store

He’s making a list, he’s checking it twice, but Santa’s festive surveillance seemingly does nothing to improve children’s behaviour

Footprints preserved on the shore of Lake Turkana in Kenya seem to be from two ancient human species, showing they lived there at the same time about 1.5 million years ago

It has been 50 years since archaeologists discovered Lucy, perhaps the most famous ancient hominin ever found. But the scientists who have studied her say that this fossil gave us a misleading image of the nature of her species

From food insecurity and cholera in Malawi, to droughts and fooding in Somalia, to scorching heatwaves in Burkina Faso – as temperatures continue to rise, so too does the toll on people

Cuneiform was invented around 3200 BC in ancient Mesopotamia, but before it came a much simpler form of writing called proto-cuneiform. Researchers are now shedding light on how writing began along with the cultural factors that spurred on its invention.

Before Mesopotamian people invented writing, they used cylinder seals to press patterns into wet clay – and some of the symbols used were carried over into proto-writing