Properly deciphering the branching pathways of evolution could unlock the history of every component of natural biology.

Birds are the most diverse land vertebrate on the planet, and now scientists have constructed a complete evolutionary tree of the 11,000 or so known species. This data came from hundreds of studies ...

The three-dimensional shape of a protein can be used to resolve deep, ancient evolutionary relationships in the tree of life, according to a new study. It is the first time researchers use data from ...

New research headed by scientists at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) has demonstrated how the three-dimensional shape of a protein can be used to resolve deep, ancient evolutionary ...

Most of us can imagine a tree of life; some can even sketch one out. Branches coming off branches coming off branches, each describing a turn in evolutionary history. Over here are the molluscs. Over ...

Professor Emily Jane McTavish and colleagues at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology have mapped the evolution of every known bird species. They created a complete evolutionary tree of bird species by ...

The order Primates consists of not only our closest relatives on earth, the seven great apes, but also over 450 species of monkeys, lemurs, lorises, and galagos. Primates are fantastically diverse, ...

The clearest picture yet of our “last universal common ancestor” suggests it was a relatively complex organism living 4.2 billion years ago, a time long considered too harsh for life to flourish. If ...

An updated evolutionary model shows that living systems evolve in a split-and-hit-the-gas dynamic, where new lineages appear in sudden bursts rather than during a long marathon of gradual changes.

Editor's note: All opinions, columns and letters reflect the views of the individual writer and not necessarily those of the IDS or its staffers. We’ve all seen this poster in our middle school ...