Why did the hominin cross the plain? We may never know. But anthropologists are pretty sure that a smattering of bare footprints preserved in volcanic ash in Laetoli, Tanzania bear witness to an evolutionary milestone. These ...
Space Exploration
Feb 15, 2019
1
74
Long before human ancestors began hunting large mammals for meat, a fatty diet provided them with the nutrition to develop bigger brains, posits a new paper in Current Anthropology.
Archaeology
Feb 5, 2019
2
448
Rapidly increasing efforts to generate whole genome sequences for many vertebrate species are providing a significantly improved understanding of the biological differences among animals across the tree of life. In a new ...
Biotechnology
Jan 31, 2019
0
78
Researchers from Aarhus University, Denmark, and Copenhagen Zoo have discovered that the human mutation rate is significantly slower than for our closest primate relatives. This new knowledge may be important for estimates ...
Plants & Animals
Jan 23, 2019
0
352
Human ancestors first set foot on the interior of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau around 30,000-40,000 years ago, according to new research by scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). This new finding moves back ...
Archaeology
Nov 30, 2018
0
270
New research from an international team of scientists led by University of Cape Town isotope geochemist Dr. Robyn Pickering is the first to provide a timeline for fossils from the caves within the Cradle of Humankind. It ...
Archaeology
Nov 21, 2018
0
159
Saber-toothed cats, the large felid predators that once roamed Southern California, may have eaten softer foods after suffering oral injuries, according to a new study. Microscopic damage patterns on teeth from fossilized ...
Archaeology
Nov 5, 2018
0
6
More than 3 million years ago, our ancient human ancestors, including their toddler-aged children, were standing on two feet and walking upright, according to a new study published in Science Advances.
Archaeology
Jul 4, 2018
24
411
New research out of South Africa's Wonderwerk Cave led by anthropologists at the University of Toronto (U of T) shows that the climate of the interior of southern Africa almost two million years ago was like no modern African ...
Archaeology
May 29, 2018
3
290
Ever since scientists realized that humans evolved from a succession of primate ancestors, the public imagination has been focused on the inflection point when those ancestors switched from ape-like shuffling to walking upright ...
Archaeology
Apr 23, 2018
1
98
