I write about life sciences, health and the environment. My first book "The Genesis Quest" is about how life on Earth began and is out now
Untangling the enigmatic origins of the human family’s newest species
Five years ago, a fossil found in the Philippines was determined to be from a new species of hominin called Homo luzonensis. Since then, we’ve learned a bit more about the newest member of the human family
The unexpected reasons why human childhood is extraordinarily long
Why childhood is so protracted has long been mysterious: now a spate of archaeological discoveries suggest an intriguing explanation
First Nations astronomers predicted eclipses without using writing
The oldest written records of eclipses are in cuneiform texts from around 2000 BC, but examination of oral traditions reveal First Nations astronomers were predicting eclipses by word of mouth
Did the people of Easter Island independently invent writing?
Wooden tablets containing a language of glyphs called Rongorongo may be evidence that the people of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, created their own writing system without the influence of European language
The Story of Earth's Climate review: 25 discoveries tell tangled tale
Palaeontologist Donald R. Prothero squares up to the tough task of explaining how life and climate have shaped each other over the 4.5 billion years of Earth's history
AlphaFold: A practical guide
This tutorial is aimed at researchers who are interested in using AlphaFold2 to predict protein structures and integrate these predictions into their projects
The unexpected ways your skin impacts your health and longevity
Looking after your skin isn't just a vanity project, with growing evidence that damage to the skin can drive ageing, inflammation and even cognitive decline
Crypt review: Alice Roberts on murder and mayhem in the Middle Ages
The archaeologist's latest book on what bones teach us about Britain's history not only provides the grisly facts, but helps us feel them
Crucial chemical for life can form in conditions found on early Earth
Pantetheine, which helps enzymes to work and is found in every organism, can be formed by simple reactions and may have played a role in the origins of life
Ancient bronze hand may offer clue to the origins of Basque language
Archaeologists say a mysterious language inscribed on a 2000-year-old metal hand may be related to Basque, but linguists aren't convinced
When does a bone become a fossil?
As organic material in a bone gets replaced by minerals over time, it becomes a fossil. But that can happen at different rates even within the same individual
The uncomfortable truth about cannibalism’s role in human history
Fossil evidence shows that humans have a very long history of eating each other. Now, archaeologists are discovering that the practice of cannibalism could be surprisingly compassionate
Hominins may have left Africa 700,000 years earlier than we thought
Our hominin ancestors originated in Africa and the consensus is that they didn't leave there until about 1.8 million years ago, but stone tools found in Jordan challenge the idea
Modern humans were already in northern Europe 45,000 years ago
DNA from bones found in a cave in Germany has been identified as from Homo sapiens, showing that our species endured frigid conditions there as they expanded across the continent
Orangutan calls have an intricate structure resembling human language
Calls made by male orangutans to attract females have short sequences nested inside longer sequences – a feature called recursion that was thought to be unique to human language