Genetic analysis has traced the evolutionary footsteps of modern humans all the way back to a prehistoric wetland that spanned parts of modern-day Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe.
Newly discovered billion-year-old fossilised fungi are more than twice as old as previous finds, and suggest that fungi may have been preparing Earth’s lands for plant life for millions of years.
Rivers are natural boundaries for evolving populations. But scientists don’t agree whether they create new species or just help maintain them. Research using birds’ molecular clocks provides some answers.
How do scientists figure out when evolutionary events – like species splitting away from a common ancestor – happened? It turns out our DNA is a kind of molecular clock, keeping time via genetic changes.