While conventional theory says they needed stocky physiques to stay steady in trees, australopiths might have needed short legs more to battle for females.
The distinctive culture that arrived via a land bridge between Asia and Alaska were not the first people in the New World, new radiocarbon analysis suggests.
About 50 objects found at a Minnesota construction site could be at least 13,000 years old, archaeologists said, potentially pushing back human presence in the region by millennia.
People born with an insensitivity to pain could help researchers understand how pain works and one day develop new painkillers with fewer side effects.
The fossil called Little Foot, which had tantalized scientists with its human- and apelike features, is a million years younger than had been thought, a new study says.
Mel Gibson's movie puts a fictional face on the collapse of the Maya Empire. Now see what the civilization really looked like, according to National Geographic artists and ancient murals.
The emergence of "female labor roles" played an important role in evolutionary history, a new study says, and might have helped modern humans edge out Neandertals.
Curing blindness and treating diabetes "naturally" in mice are just two of the recent breakthroughs that suggest stem cells hold real potential for helping humans.