Evolution

Guest host W. Wayt Gibbs talks with Jason Wright, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University’s Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, about what’s known as the Fermi paradox: In a universe of trillions of planets, where is everybody?

These are startling times, but there’s a way out

Oxpeckers riding on rhinoceroses feast on ticks, and their calls warn the nearsighted herbivores about approaching humans.

New discoveries have raised the possibility of exploring dino genetics, but controversy surrounds the results

Painted images of intriguing human-animal hybrids are signs of modern thought

Artifacts show people used the route for 1,000 years—then abandoned it, possibly amid a plague

Although the tusk can be a weapon, the variation in tusk length among animals of similar body size points to it being primarily a mating status signal.

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

Dating back 67 million years, this representative of the group of modern birds has been dubbed the Wonderchicken (which is not an April Fools’ Day joke).

The bones of humans and their domesticated animals will overwhelm biodiversity in the fossil record 

Our choppers are crowded, crooked and riddled with cavities. It hasn’t always been this way

To make it in urban areas, birds tend to be either large-brained and able to produce few offspring or small-brained and extremely fertile. In natural habitats, most birds brains are of average size.