A new study theorizes that evolution ticks at different speeds, especially when a big group of organisms first appears.

Once upon a time, there were a bunch of one-celled microbes, swimming, eating, reproducing, doing all the things that a one-cell bit of life can do. Then, some time later, there were their descendants ...

Evolution is often perceived as an incredibly slow, natural process driven by environmental pressures over millennia. That characterization certainly holds true, but humans have also repeatedly ...

A certain group of animals have evolved crab-like features due to a process called carcinization that occurs throughout ...

This 30-million-year-long gap is actually rather helpful to Darwin. It means that there was plenty of time for the ancestor ...

An international team of scientists has uncovered a fascinating piece of the evolutionary puzzle: how the ventral nerve cord, a key component of the central nervous system, evolved in ecdysozoan ...

In five cases where vertebrates evolved monogamy, the same changes in gene expression occurred each time. In many non-monogamous species, females provide all or most of the offspring care. In ...

The peppered moth is an iconic example of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. For centuries peppered moths (Biston betularia) were common in the forests around Manchester, ...

With copper-blue blood prized by modern medicine and a body plan older than dinosaurs, the horseshoe crab reveals how ancient ...

To understand the origins of multicelled life, researchers are studying a motley assortment of simpler animal relatives. The commonalities they’re unearthing offer a trove of clues about our mutual ...