Genetic testing of people who died in Kyrgyzstan eight years before plague reached Europe reveals an ancient strain of the bacterium Yersinia pestis.

Analyses of bones found across the world suggest that the birds entered human settlements more recently than previously thought. But they don’t seem to have immediately made their way to the table, raising questions as to why people started keeping them.

An analysis of skull and vertebrae fossils suggests that an early relative of giraffes butted heads to compete for mates, which may reveal why modern giraffes are so throaty.

When unexpected events occur, norepinephrine signals mouse brains to pay attention to key details.

Many species of birds and other vertebrates form pair bonds and mate with just one other individual for much of their lives. But the unions don’t always work out. Scientists want to know the underlying factors.

A team of scientists have discovered an ancient arthropod that may show the origins of branched limbs and the first gill-like breathing structures in the clade.

Advances in genetics in recent years has revealed that many apparently exclusive pairs in fact sometimes mate with individuals other than their partner, but social monogamy is widespread.

Endothermy was widespread among both avian and non-avian dinosaurs, a study suggests, so the metabolic strategy is unlikely to account for birds’ survival through the mass extinction event that wiped out their dinosaur cousins.

Arboreal salamanders use skydiving techniques to avoid smashing to the ground after a fall.

Fogel mined information from isotopes to explore modern and ancient ecosystems, climatic changes, and evolution.

The new fossil from Laos helps answer the question of how some people from Oceania carry DNA from the ancient hominin.

The land’s first known singer may have sounded like a raspier version of today’s familiar insect fiddlers.

In a chapter entitled “Predators, Silence, Wings,” author David George Haskell explores the soundscapes of bygone eras of animal communication.

Researchers engineered strands of RNA that can link amino acids together, suggesting a way that RNA and proteins may have emerged together to create the earliest forms of life.

The work reveals that the pandemic flu was likely the direct predecessor of the seasonal H1N1 flu that circulated for decades.

The behavior is the first example of a mammal mimicking a more-dangerous species.

Once thought to be silent, fish turn out to produce a range of vocalizations—so polluting the oceans with noise could pose a danger to them.

New techniques have shown that people reached the New World far earlier than the long-standing estimate of 13,000 years ago, but scientists still debate exactly when humans arrived on the continent—and how.

Diverse lines of evidence point to humans’ presence in the New World long before the dawn of Clovis culture. But rewriting this chapter of human history raises many questions about how these early people came to inhabit these continents.

Researchers tracked the movements of endangered caribou and sequenced a portion of their genomes to determine which genes may influence migratory behavior.