Struggling to sleep in the heat? The good news is that a handful of easy cooling tricks can help your body stay comfortable and make hot nights far more bearable. When temperatures rise, sleep often suffers. Hot nights can make it harder to fall asleep, increase waking during the night, and leave people feeling less [...]

Homo erectus may have left a detectable genetic trace in living humans through ancient interbreeding with Denisovans. For much of the 20th century, human evolution was often pictured as a branching tree. One trunk split into separate limbs, and each ancient human relative, or hominin, occupied its own tidy branch. That was the version many [...]

The story of Earth’s first animals may need rewriting after ancient fossils revealed an earlier start to complex life. From butterflies to blue whales, corals, and worms, Earth is home to an incredible diversity of animals. How all of these animals evolved from earlier, simpler ancestors is one of the most exciting stories in the [...]

A deep ocean whale graveyard is revealing new clues about whale evolution and the ecosystems that form around their remains. When a whale dies, its body can become the beginning of an entire deep ocean ecosystem. For a time, the carcass may drift at the surface, drawing sharks and other predators. Eventually, after weathering and [...]