Animals
No One Knows How the Biggest Animals on Earth—Baleen Whales—Find Their Food
How do giant filter-feeding whales find their tiny prey? The answer could be key to saving endangered species
Stories by Kate Wong
Animals
Extreme Birding Competition Is a Cutthroat Test of Skill, Strategy and Endurance
A team of birders races to find as many bird species as possible in 24 hours
Biology
Brood X Cicadas Are Emerging at Last
The Great Eastern Brood has been underground for 17 years. Here’s what the insects have been up to down there
Animals
What Scientists Have Learned from 100 Years of Bird Banding
A rich archive of data has illuminated the secret lives of birds
Evolution
Mammoth Genomes Shatter Record for Oldest DNA Sequences
Researchers extracted DNA from fossils that are more than a million years old, illuminating the origins of the woolly mammoth and the Columbian mammoth
Evolution
Neandertalized ‘Mini Brains’ Yield Clues to Modern Human Uniqueness
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...
Policy
Seven Ways the Election Will Shape the Future of Science, Health and the Environment
Climate change, nuclear arms control, the pandemic and more will be determined by whoever wins the White House and Congress
Evolution
How Scientists Discovered the Staggering Complexity of Human Evolution
Darwin would be delighted by the story his successors have revealed
Evolution
How Birds Evolved Their Incredible Diversity
An analysis of 391 skulls shows that birds evolved surprisingly slowly, compared with their dinosaur forerunners
Evolution
Stone Age String Strengthens Case for Neandertal Smarts
Our extinct cousins had fiber technology. Stop calling them dumb already
Culture
Is This Indonesian Cave Painting the Earliest Portrayal of a Mythical Story?
Archaeologists have dated figurative rock art from Sulawesi to at least 43,900 years ago
Evolution
Is This Indonesian Cave Painting the Earliest Portrayal of a Mythical Story?
Archaeologists have dated the image to at least 43,900 years ago, but their interpretation has met with doubt
Evolution
The Face of the Earliest Human Ancestor, Revealed
A long-sought fossil could redraw our family tree
Evolution
Solving the Mystery of Songbird Diversity
A strange chromosome may have provided fodder for the evolution of new traits
The Complexity of Napoleon Chagnon, Anthropology’s Lightning Rod
Unpublished excerpts from a 2000 interview capture one of the most controversial figures in modern science
Policy
Controversial Anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, Who Chronicled the Lives of the Yanomamö, Has Died
The embattled researcher answers a book’s charges that he incited and exaggerated the violence of the Yanomamö in this profile from 2001
Behavior
Truth, Lies & Uncertainty
Searching for reality in unreal times
Evolution
Philippine Fossils Add Surprising New Species to Human Family Tree
The second tiny ancestor found in the islands of southeast Asia, Homo luzonensis challenges prevailing views of early human dispersal and adaptability
Evolution
Is This the Footprint of One of the Last Neandertals?
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
Evolution
Cave That Housed Neandertals and Denisovans Challenges View of Cultural Evolution
Researchers have deduced which early human species occupied Denisova Cave and when, drawing surprising conclusions about who made the sophisticated artifacts found there
