Ephedra seeds found in an ancient burial pit may be the earliest evidence yet for the medicinal use of plants. Stone Age people once occupied a cave called Grotte des Pigeons near Taforalt in the ...

A study on medicinal plants published in Cell highlights the symbiotic relationship between humans and plant species, particularly in the context of medicine. This relationship, which spans millennia, ...

Wild chimpanzees have been observed self-medicating their wounds with plants, providing medical aid to other chimps and even removing others from snares left by human hunters, new research suggests.

Sixty thousand years ago, humans in southern Africa were already mastering nature’s chemistry. Scientists have discovered ...

Few living things seem to have less in common than plants and animals, but that assumption is being increasingly challenged.

In 1997, at age 19, Toby Kiers talked her way into the Smithsonian's renowned tropical research institute on Barro Colorado, an island in the middle of the Panama Canal. The scientists studied the ...

The common belief about our ancient human ancestors is that they were primarily carnivores, hunting animals for the main source of food. This "Paleolithic meat-eater" trope is widely believed by both ...

It may seem unusual to think of chimpanzees as doctors, but they more closely resemble human healers than you may expect. Wild chimpanzees were once thought to be incapable of healing themselves. It ...