Evolution

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).

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

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

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.

Some citizen science projects can be done during quarantine

The bilateral organism crawled on the seafloor, taking in organic matter at one end and dumping the remains out the other some 555 million years ago.

Is life’s persistence on Earth really the norm?

New research examines how the animals begin close, blood-sharing partnerships

In this 2012 interview, David Quammen talks about his book Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, which is highly relevant to the emergence of the coronavirus that has changed our lives.