We are the products of evolution, and not just evolution that occurred billions of years ago. As scientists peer deeper into our genes, they are discovering instances of human evolution in just the past few thousand years.

People in Tibet and Ethiopian highlands have adapted to living at high altitudes, for example. Cattle-herding people in East Africa and northern Europe have gained a mutation that helps them digest milk as adults.

On Thursday in the journal Cell, a team of researchers reported a new kind of adaptation — not to air or to food, but to the ocean. A group of sea-dwelling people in Southeast Asia have evolved into better divers.

Continue reading “Bodies Remodeled for a Life at Sea” →

Of all the plants that humanity has turned into crops, none is more puzzling than the sweet potato. Indigenous people of Central and South America grew it on farms for generations, and Europeans discovered it when Christopher Columbus arrived in the Caribbean.

In the 18th century, however, Captain Cook stumbled across sweet potatoes again — over 4,000 miles away, on remote Polynesian islands. European explorers later found them elsewhere in the Pacific, from Hawaii to New Guinea.

Continue reading “All by Itself, the Humble Sweet Potato Colonized the World” →

In 2013, two biologists named Jamie Voyles and Corinne L. Richards-Zawacki spent weeks slogging up and down mountainsides in Panama. “We were bug-bitten and beat up,” recalled Dr. Voyles, now an assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Near the end of their trek, they came to a stop. In front of them sat the object of their quest: a single gold-and-black frog.

“I can’t tell you what that moment was like,” Dr. Voyles said.

Continue reading “A Few Species of Frogs That Vanished May Be on the Rebound” →