
Absinthe through the ages
Kate Wong is an award-winning science writer and senior editor for features at Scientific American, where she has focused on evolution, ecology, anthropology, archaeology, paleontology and animal behavior. She is fascinated by human origins, which she has covered for nearly 30 years. Recently she has become obsessed with birds. Her reporting has taken her to caves in France and Croatia that Neandertals once called home to the shores of Kenya’s Lake Turkana in search of the oldest stone tools in the world, as well as to Madagascar on an expedition to unearth ancient mammals and dinosaurs, the icy waters of Antarctica, where humpback whales feast on krill, and a “Big Day” race around the state of Connecticut to find as many bird species as possible in 24 hours. Wong is co-author, with Donald Johanson, of Lucy’s Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins. She holds a bachelor of science degree in biological anthropology and zoology from the University of Michigan. Follow her on Bluesky @katewong.bsky.social

Absinthe through the ages

An interview with Alex, the African grey parrot

Gallery: The Hominids Take Manhattan
Take a tour of the new Hall of Human Origins at the American Museum of Natural History--view the gallery

Lucy's Baby
An extraordinary new human fossil renews debate over the evolution of upright walking

Lucy's Baby

Finding Lucy's Baby: Q&A with Zeresenay Alemseged
The leader of the team that discovered the earliest baby in the human fossil record discusses the significance of the find

Special Report: Lucy's Baby
An extraordinary new human fossil comes to light

Hobbit Hubbub
New study stirs debate over mini human species

The Morning of the Modern Mind
Controversial discoveries suggest that the roots of our vaunted intellect run far deeper than is commonly believed.

The Littlest Human
A spectacular find in Indonesia reveals that a strikingly different hominid shared the earth with our kind in the not so distant past

Stranger in a New Land
Stunning finds in the Republic of Georgia upend long-standing ideas about the first hominids to journey out of Africa

Newfound Fossil Is Transitional between Fish and Landlubbers

Drug Found to Reverse the Ravages of Alzheimer's in Mice

Food for Thought
Giant Hominid teeth not for crunching nuts, but shellfish

Isotopes and GPS Reveal Secrets of Elephant Migration and Diet

Americans and Chinese Differ in Their World View--Literally

Chimps Found to Conform to Cultural Norms

Climate Flux Could Have Fostered Early Human Speciation, Diatom Study Suggests

Conservationist Plan Would Give Lions, Elephants a Home on the Range

A Bar at the Heart of the Milky Way

Flexible 'E-skin' Could Endow Robots with Humanlike Sense of Touch

Footprints to Fill
Flat feet and doubts about makers of the Laetoli tracks

Desert Island
How climate can promote speciation

Monkey Hear, Monkey Count