On Valentine’s Day in 2018, a team of scientists walked across a flat expanse in the badlands of northeastern Ethiopia, scanning the ground for fossils. An eagle-eyed field assistant, Omar Abdulla, ...

A badly crushed cranium unearthed decades ago from a riverbank in central China that once defied classification is now shaking up the human family tree, according to a new analysis. Scientists ...

Human flexibility in shoulders and elbows originated from ancient apes' need for safe tree descent. A new study reveals chimpanzees, unlike monkeys, used their upper limbs as a braking system, ...

A new study of a 1-million-year-old human skull found in central China revealed a previously unknown branch of the human family tree, dramatically pushing back the accepted timeline of human evolution ...

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 ...

This artist's impression shows the head of an adult male individual who lived roughly 1 million years ago in China's Hubei Province, based on the digital reconstruction of a fossilized archaic human ...

In 1990, an ancient human skull was unearthed in China's Hubei Province that was so badly deformed during fossilization that it was hard to gauge its significance. A new analysis now indicates that ...

Scientists say they have solved the mystery of the Burtele foot, a set of 3.4 million-year-old bones found in Ethiopia in 2009. The fossils, along with others unearthed more recently, have now been ...