An international team of researchers has presented this week the analysis of a fossil discovered in Bulgaria that could ...

The museum’s groundbreaking Hall of Human Origins centers around the adaptations that set early humans apart Jack Tamisiea What does it mean to be human? This question, deceptively simple and imbued ...

A fossil cranium, which is around 1 million years old and was initially believed to belong to Homo erectus, is now thought to be part of the Asian longi clade, closely linked to the Denisovans, which ...

The Trump administration is reviewing the National Museum of Natural History as part of a broad inquiry into the Smithsonian Institute. The museum's exhibits cover Earth's 4.5-billion-year history, ...

Paleoanthropologist Rick Potts, Ph.D., who directs the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, will deliver a lecture March 3 at 5 p.m. at the School ...

Geneticists have a better understanding of how prehistoric pairings unfolded, with new research suggesting they were mostly between male Neanderthals and female humans.

A badly crushed cranium unearthed decades ago from a riverbank in central China that once defied classification is now shaking up the human family tree, according to a new analysis.Related video above ...

South Africa has one of the world's richest fossil records of hominins (humans and their fossil ancestors). But many misconceptions still exist regarding human evolution, and school textbooks contain ...

Human evolution’s biggest mystery, which emerged 15 years ago from a 60,000-year-old pinkie finger bone, finally started to unravel in 2025. Analysis of DNA extracted from the fossil electrified the ...

WASHINGTON – As visitors walk into the rotunda of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, they’re greeted by an 11-ton taxidermized African Bush elephant, affectionately nicknamed Henry.