For decades, many scientists have relied on the "hard steps" model to suggest that intelligent life is rare — the improbable result of a series of unlikely evolutionary leaps. But new research by ...

A popular model of evolution concludes that it was incredibly unlikely for humanity to evolve on Earth, and that ...

The evolution of humans on Earth may not be entirely exceptional. That is because intelligent life is likely to form if certain planetary conditions are met, a new study suggests. This idea displaces ...

So many things had to happen for us (humans) to end up here (Earth). Our species is made possible because a water-filled planet orbits a particular distance away from a star of a particular size.

Paleontologists who study earth’s ancient fossil record might not seem to be the obvious choice when asking about the prevalence of intelligent life in the cosmos. But paleontology, the study of ...

WASHINGTON, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Roughly 300,000 years ago, our species first appeared on the African landscape before spreading globally and coming to dominate the planet. All this happened about 4.5 ...

Humanity may not be extraordinary but rather the natural evolutionary outcome for our planet and likely others, according to a new model for how intelligent life developed on Earth. Humanity may not ...

Daniel Brady Mills receives funding from the German Research Foundation. Jason Wright works for Penn State University, where his research in the search for life in the universe is supported by ...

New theory proposes that humans — and analogous life beyond Earth — may represent the probable outcome of biological and planetary evolution UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Humanity may not be extraordinary ...

Some of the greatest evolutionary biologists of the 20th century famously dismissed the prospect of humanlike intelligence beyond Earth. Elen11 Elen11/Getty Editor’s note: The Focus on Research column ...