Ancient DNA is turning human evolution into a crime scene reconstruction, and one of the prime suspects is a herpesvirus that quietly slipped into our chromosomes and never left. By tracing this viral ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Our DNA contains remnants of ancient viruses that embedded themselves into our genetic code. - TanyaJoy/iStockphoto/Getty Images ...

Long before the Black Death killed millions across Europe in the Middle Ages, an earlier, more elusive version of the plague spread across much of Eurasia. For years, scientists were unsure how the ...

The Shroud of Turin is a 14.4-foot by 3.6-foot linen cloth bearing the faint, negative image of a crucified man. For centuries, millions have believed it to be the authentic burial shroud of Jesus of ...

Deep inside a handful of caves, scientists are pulling genetic secrets out of bones, teeth and even the surrounding dirt, and the results are upending what we thought we knew about our own species.

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. DNA (illustrative). (photo credit: SHUTTERSTOCK) The genetic evidence is consistent with a father-daughter union, making it one of ...

Roughly 10,000 years ago, humans started shifting from being nomadic hunter-gatherers to building large agricultural settlements, marking one of the greatest transformations in human history. This ...

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors have given us many things. They passed down mastery of fire for cooking and early survival technologies, such as stone tools. They may also have given us the secret to a ...

Researchers have reconstructed ancient herpesvirus genomes from Iron Age and medieval Europeans, revealing that HHV-6 has been infecting humans for at least 2,500 years. Some people inherited the ...