A major evolutionary theory says most genetic changes don’t really matter, but new evidence suggests that’s not true. Researchers found that helpful mutations happen surprisingly often. The twist is ...

Understanding the evolution of insect mating behavior is essential for explaining how early insects adapted to life on land.

UChicago paleontologists use CT scanning and simulations to show how a 250-million-year-old mammal predecessor could hear ...

How will life on Earth and the ecosystems that support it adapt to climate change? Which species will go extinct – or evolve into something new? How will microbes develop further resistance to ...

Repeated environmental changes can lead evolution in unexpected directions, and research from Vermont shows that studying a single population does not capture the full story of an entire species. All ...

Every living being must cope with a changing world—summer gives way to winter, one year it floods and the next is a drought.

An international collaboration study reveals how evolution and locomotion patterns, such as bipedalism, shaped bone ...

The DNA mutations that drive evolution are generally thought to be fairly random, but a new study suggests there’s some order to the chaos. Comparing the genomes of hundreds of plants grown in a lab, ...

A study led by researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego provides new insight on the origins and early evolution of echinoids, a group of marine animals that includes modern ...

In the temperate forests of the Northern Hemisphere, a quiet but powerful story has been unfolding for nearly 60 million years. It’s a story written in the DNA of a fruit so familiar that its history ...

Evolution has long been viewed as a rather random process, with the traits of species shaped by chance mutations and environmental events — and therefore largely unpredictable. But an international ...