Compared to the great apes, humans have an exceptionally long childhood, during which parents, grandparents and other adults contribute to their physical and cognitive development. This is a key developmental period for acquiring all the cognitive skills needed in the complex social environment of a human group.

Birds descended from the dinosaurs, but researchers have known relatively little about how the bird's brain took shape over millions of years. A new fossil sheds light on that mystery.

Palaeontologists have pieced together the brain structure of a bird that lived 80 million years ago named Navaornis hestiae, thanks to a remarkably well-preserved fossil