Michael Marshall

Many of the fastest-evolving sections of the human genome are involved in brain development

Ancient humans repeatedly entered the Arabian peninsula from Africa during the past 400,000 year

The Actual Star has three storylines, separated by millennia: one is set 1000 years ago in a declining Mayan kingdom, one in 2012 and one in a distant future shaped by catastrophic climate change

For the first time, DNA has been obtained from the bones of a Stone Age person who lived on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi

Earth is unlike any planet we know by virtue of hosting a rich variety of life. But experts are still unsure what got it started

New evidence reveals that Arabia was not a mere stopover for ancestral humans leaving Africa, but a lush homeland where they flourished and evolved

The more we step past our preconceptions about where our ancestors lived, the more we will find – and the deeper our understanding of our origins will become

Chimpanzees and other great apes swing their hips when they walk, but modern humans don’t

It’s good to be social. Male chimpanzees with more friends are more likely to father offspring – and there are at least three ways this can occur

An artificial “minimal cell” that has had all but the most essential genes stripped out can evolve just as fast as a normal cell

We round-up what the latest research says on efficacy at preventing symptoms, hospitalisation, and death, as well as side effects, plus the latest thinking on coronavirus variants and booster shots, for all the leading vaccines

The ancient Babylonians understood key concepts in geometry, including how to make precise right-angled triangles

For the first time, a wild chimpanzee with albinism has been spotted. The baby ape was born with bright white fur and a total lack of pigmentation

The origin of animals may have happened 350 million years earlier than thought. Fossils that seem to be sponges, one of the first animals to evolve, have been found in rocks from 890 million years ago

A new, more complete version of the human genome is already bearing fruit, revealing enormous amounts of genetic variation between people that couldn’t previously be detected