Analysis of a Neolithic skull revealed not only how she looked but also where her people originated far across the Mediterranean.
The oldest Homo sapiens fossils that anthropologists have found thus far date to around 315,000 years ago. That means we can say that modern humans are at least that old. But our lineage likely extends further back in time — we just don’t have the fossils to prove it.
Fragmentary bone fossils and a molar found in Bulgaria dated to roughly 45,000 years ago show that Homo sapiens populations swept into Europe – until then a bastion for the Neanderthals – earlier than previously known, scientists said on Monday.
A structure critical to our brain’s core language pathway, found only in humans and apes, has now also been identified in monkeys, according to a controversial new study – suggesting the origins of language may have appeared 20 to 25 million years earlier than previously thought.
When it comes to deciphering our ancient family tree, DNA from fossils is the new gold standard. But after about half a million years, even the best-preserved DNA degrades into illegibility, leaving the story of our early evolution shrouded in mystery. A new study of proteins taken from the tooth of an enigmatic human ancestor reveals their rough place in the family tree—and shows how ancient proteins can push beyond the limits of DNA.
Genetic information from an 800,000-year-old human fossil has been retrieved for the first time. The results from the University of Copenhagen shed light on one of the branching points in the human family tree, reaching much further back in time than previously possible.
Scientists have solved a longstanding mystery over the age of a landmark skull found in 1921 in Zambia – the first fossil of an extinct human species discovered in Africa – in research with big implications for deciphering the origin of our own species.
Up to now, studies have focused on determining when the first modern human arrived in China, but there has been hardly any research into the dynamics of this settlement. A joint paper by institutions from China, Spain and the United Kingdom proposes that, given its size and biogeographical diversity, China would have received migrations by Homo sapiens from both north and south, with hardly any overlap between them.
Ikaria wariootia is half the size of a grain of rice and an early example of a bilateral organism
High-resolution micro-CT scanning of the skull of the fossil specimen known as “Little Foot” has revealed some aspects of how this Australopithecus species used to live more than 3 million years ago.
