An extensive study, published in Communications Biology, sheds new light on the complex evolution of our feet. "The human foot is one of the most complex masterpieces of evolution, a work of art in ...

Oxygen played a key role in the evolution of complex organisms, according to new research published in BMC Evolutionary Biology. The study shows that the complexity of life forms increased earlier ...

Understanding the material basis of adaptive evolution has been a central goal in biology dating back to at least the time of Darwin. One focus of current debates is whether adaptive evolution relies ...

The evolution of complex life forms may have gotten a jump start billions of years ago, when geologic events operating over millions of years caused large quantities of phosphorus to wash into the ...

The brains of birds and mammals have diverged substantially during the course of evolution. A research team led by Prof. Dr Henrik Kaessmann at the Center for Molecular Biology of Heidelberg ...

As conceived by Charles Darwin in the 1800s, evolution is a slow, gradual process during which species adaptations are inherited incrementally over generations. However, today biologists can see how ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 1950 the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi was discussing the possibility of intelligent alien life with his colleagues. If alien ...

At the dawn of complex life, evolution created a container for DNA, its most treasured item. A few billion years later, 20th-century microscopists looked at this container — the nucleus — up close and ...