Stories by Kate Wong

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A rich archive of data has illuminated the secret lives of birds

Researchers extracted DNA from fossils that are more than a million years old, illuminating the origins of the woolly mammoth and the Columbian mammoth

Experiments on clusters of cultured cells hint that a gene variant found only in Homo sapiens profoundly changed brain development in our species, compared with our extinct relatives

Climate change, nuclear arms control, the pandemic and more will be determined by whoever wins the White House and Congress

Darwin would be delighted by the story his successors have revealed

An analysis of 391 skulls shows that birds evolved surprisingly slowly, compared with their dinosaur forerunners

Our extinct cousins had fiber technology. Stop calling them dumb already

Archaeologists have dated figurative rock art from Sulawesi to at least 43,900 years ago

Archaeologists have dated the image to at least 43,900 years ago, but their interpretation has met with doubt

A long-sought fossil could redraw our family tree

A strange chromosome may have provided fodder for the evolution of new traits

Unpublished excerpts from a 2000 interview capture one of the most controversial figures in modern science

Searching for reality in unreal times

The second tiny ancestor found in the islands of southeast Asia, Homo luzonensis challenges prevailing views of early human dispersal and adaptability

The fossilized print, found in Gibraltar, is said to date to 28,000 years ago, which might mean it belonged to a Neandertal. But not everyone agrees with that interpretation

Researchers have deduced which early human species occupied Denisova Cave and when, drawing surprising conclusions about who made the sophisticated artifacts found there

Modeling shows the 290-million-year-old Orobates had an advanced way of walking—revising an enduring view of how tetrapods colonized dry land

The hues and patterns of modern bird eggs trace back to their dinosaurian ancestors

Recent fossil, archaeological and genetic discoveries are revising the rise of our species

Abstract images in Spanish caves date back 65,000 years—millennia before Homo sapiens set foot in Europe—settling a long-running debate over Neandertal cognition

The tools could suggest that Homo sapiens reached South Asia far earlier than previously thought, but critics disagree 

The jaw fragment suggests our species began traveling abroad 50,000 years earlier than previously thought 

A remarkably complete skeleton and, at last, an age for mysterious Homo naledi