Evolution

Neanderthals and Denisovans may have endowed modern humans with genetic variants that helped them thrive in new environments.

A specific set of neurons deep in the brain may motivate us to seek company, holding social species together.

The cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman believes that evolution and quantum mechanics conspire to make objective reality an illusion.

Scientists have created a synthetic organism that possesses only the genes it needs to survive. But they have no idea what roughly a third of those genes do.

New insights from neuroscience — aided by a small zoo’s worth of dancing animals — are revealing the biological origins of rhythm.

The biologist David Deamer proposes that life evolved from a collection of interacting molecules, probably in a pool in the shadow of a volcano.

A disarmingly simple model of ecology does everything well — except predict how rapidly nature can change. Can it become more realistic while still avoiding all of biology’s messy complexities?

Perhaps chemistry played a more instrumental role in the origin of life than scientists thought.

Searching for signs of life on faraway planets, astrobiologists must decide which telltale biosignature gases to target.