The museum’s groundbreaking Hall of Human Origins centers around the adaptations that set early humans apart Jack Tamisiea What does it mean to be human? This question, deceptively simple and imbued ...

The origin of the human lineage ~7 million years ago seems far removed from the Early Miocene (23 to 16 million years ago), but in fact there are surprising resonances in the anatomy, environment, and ...

A fossil cranium, which is around 1 million years old and was initially believed to belong to Homo erectus, is now thought to be part of the Asian longi clade, closely linked to the Denisovans, which ...

WASHINGTON – As visitors walk into the rotunda of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, they’re greeted by an 11-ton taxidermized African Bush elephant, affectionately nicknamed Henry.

(CNN) — Human evolution’s biggest mystery, which emerged 15 years ago from a 60,000-year-old pinkie finger bone, finally started to unravel in 2025. Analysis of DNA extracted from the fossil ...