Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may be the result of millions of years of evolution. Rapid neuronal evolution in humans is likely ASD’s genetic cause, new research suggests. Though autism can cause ...

A paper in Molecular Biology and Evolution finds that the relatively high rate of autism-spectrum disorders in humans is likely due to how humans evolved in the past. The paper is titled "A general ...

If you have spent time with an infant, you might recognize the scene: A child is wailing, inconsolable, and you, the parent, have to go to the bathroom. Or eat. Or attend to a pot that’s boiling over.

The human genome is made up of 23 pairs of chromosomes, the biological blueprints that make humans … well, human. But it turns out that some of our DNA — about 8% — are the remnants of ancient viruses ...

“Human evolution is a tree,” said Prof. Xijun Ni of Fudan University, who led the research along with Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London. “This tree had many branches, and there ...

Until Homo floresiensis was discovered, scientists assumed that the evolution of the human lineage was defined by bigger and bigger brains. Via a process called encephalization, human brains evolved ...

Human evolution is a story writ slow. It’s been about 3.8 billion years since life on Earth emerged and steadily began to ...

A new paper in Molecular Biology and Evolution, published by Oxford University Press, finds that the relatively high rate of Autism-spectrum disorders in humans is likely due to how humans evolved in ...