Life on Earth began in a way that still boggles the mind. Around 4.5 billion years ago, a chemical process called abiogenesis occurred, where life emerged from non-life. Imagine a hot, watery mix of ...

Many people today simply assume that our evolution has quietly ended with the development of the modern human. It's easy to think that medicine, science, and modern living have made us "perfect" or ...

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or ...

A new study, published July 6, 2026, in the journal Nature Communications, suggests that two of the best-known trends in human evolution—brain growth and the reduction in the size of the face and ...

Natural selection has long been considered the driving force behind human evolution. But a landmark study of 87 fossil skulls spanning the past two million years suggests the story is far more complex ...

Humans' exposure to high temperature burn injuries may have played an important role in our evolutionary development, shaping how our bodies heal, fight infection, and sometimes fail under extreme ...