https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. New research led by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History reveals that the majority of dogs living today have low but detectable levels of post-domestication wolf ancestry that has likely shaped characteristics including body size, sense of smell, and personality traits. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-modern-dogs-wolf-ancestry-tiny.html Plants & Animals Mon, 24 Nov 2025 15:00:12 EST news683197022 Would you choose to have a part of your body live on after you died? How might your choice affect your relatives—or even your entire community? https://phys.org/news/2025-11-dead-rethinking-consent-ancient-dna.html Archaeology Tue, 11 Nov 2025 12:13:06 EST news682085582 Modern humans inherited part of their ancestry from multiple, genetically distinct Denisovan groups through interbreeding events. However, the history of contact with Denisovans remains unclear. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-dynamics-denisovan-ancestry-eurasians-years.html Evolution Tue, 04 Nov 2025 11:05:03 EST news681476701 In Indonesia, cattle are not just cattle. The large island-nation houses a variety of different breeds, locally preferred for their unique set of physical attributes and strongly linked to culture and ceremonies. There is even a distinct species of domesticated bovine here, namely the Bali cattle, a domesticated version of the wild banteng. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-indonesian-genetics-cattle-sustainable-productive.html Molecular & Computational biology Thu, 25 Sep 2025 12:40:03 EDT news678022474 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 transition, known as the Neolithic Revolution, began in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East and led to the spread of farming throughout Europe. For decades, researchers have debated what drove this change. Did farming spread mainly because farmers themselves moved into new lands, or because hunter-gatherers adopted farming practices? https://phys.org/news/2025-08-ancient-dna-reveals-farming-migration.html Archaeology Wed, 27 Aug 2025 17:02:04 EDT news675532921 A team of European researchers has shed new light on the genetic origins of Papua New Guineans. The team uses advanced artificial intelligence (AI) tools to demonstrate that Papua New Guineans are closely related to other Asian populations. They share a common ancestry from the same Out of Africa event that also gave rise to other non-African groups. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-ai-papua-guineans.html Archaeology Tue, 22 Jul 2025 15:29:14 EDT news672416946 Newly sequenced ancient genomes from Yunnan, China, have shed new light on human prehistory in East Asia. In a study published in Science, a research team led by Prof. Fu Qiaomei at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences analyzed data from 127 ancient humans, dating from 7,100 to 1,400 years ago. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-ancient-genomes-human-prehistory-east.html Archaeology Thu, 29 May 2025 14:00:06 EDT news667645515 The idea of "lived experience"—knowledge gained through direct, personal experience—is now central in activism, academia and politics. Popularized by feminist thinkers like Simone de Beauvoir and concepts like standpoint theory, it makes sense that people see the world differently based on what they've been through. And movements like #MeToo showed how sharing personal stories, particularly for oppressed, marginalized or victimized groups, can drive real change. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-valued-good.html Social Sciences Tue, 27 May 2025 12:52:04 EDT news667569122 A team of researchers from the University of Huddersfield's Archaeogenetics Research Group has provided fresh insight into the genetic landscape of Spain. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-ancient-dna-reveals-ethnic-cleansing.html Archaeology Wed, 21 May 2025 10:46:30 EDT news667043187 The Phoenician culture emerged in the Bronze Age city-states of the Levant, developing prominent innovations such as the first alphabet (from which many present-day writing systems derive). By the early first millennium BCE, Phoenician cities had established a vast maritime network of trading posts as far as Iberia, spreading their culture, religion, and language throughout the central and western Mediterranean. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-ancient-dna-held-assumptions-mediterranean.html Archaeology Wed, 23 Apr 2025 11:00:24 EDT news664624501 University of Michigan researchers have developed a statistical method that can be used for such wide-ranging applications as tracing your ancestry, modeling disease spread and studying how animals spread through geographic regions. Their results are published in the journal Science. https://phys.org/news/2025-03-genetic-tree-movie-portrait-ancestry.html Molecular & Computational biology Thu, 27 Mar 2025 14:00:02 EDT news662287126 Researchers have uncovered the origins and genetic diversity of the Fulani, one of Africa's largest pastoral populations. The study reveals a complex genetic ancestry with influences from both North and West Africa, shaped by historical migrations that have left a lasting impact on their genetic landscape. https://phys.org/news/2025-02-history-fulani-largest-pastoral-populations.html Archaeology Tue, 11 Feb 2025 12:54:04 EST news658500842 Where lies the origin of the Indo-European language family? Ron Pinhasi and his team in the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Vienna contribute a new piece to this puzzle in collaboration with David Reich's ancient DNA laboratory at Harvard University. https://phys.org/news/2025-02-link-indo-european-languages-history.html Archaeology Wed, 05 Feb 2025 11:00:18 EST news657967801 Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, together with an international team, carried out an archaeogenetic study of human remains from more than 700 individuals from the Early Middle Ages. Two large burial sites, Mödling and Leobersdorf, have been genetically analyzed in their entirety. The surprising result was that the individuals from Leobersdorf were mostly of East Asian origin, while those buried in Mödling mostly had European ancestry. Both communities lived next to each other for at least six generations. https://phys.org/news/2025-01-east-asia-europe-austria-archaeologists.html Archaeology Wed, 15 Jan 2025 14:00:04 EST news656172002 The North Pontic region, which encompasses present-day Ukraine, was for centuries a crossroads of migration from multiple directions, connecting the vast Eurasian Steppe with Central Europe. https://phys.org/news/2025-01-ukraine-migration-hub-years.html Archaeology Mon, 13 Jan 2025 14:15:02 EST news656000101 Waves of human migration across Europe during the first millennium AD have been revealed using a more precise method of analyzing ancestry with ancient DNA, in research led by the Francis Crick Institute. https://phys.org/news/2024-12-ancient-dna-migrations-millennium-ad.html Archaeology Wed, 01 Jan 2025 11:00:02 EST news654765571 A team of 91 researchers—including famed geneticist Eske Willerslev at the Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Center, University of Copenhagen—has discovered a Bronze Age genetic divergence connected to eastern and western Mediterranean Indo-European language speakers. https://phys.org/news/2024-12-ancient-genomes-word-indo-european.html Archaeology Wed, 25 Dec 2024 10:00:01 EST news654188243 Genetic variants that determine the shape of your teeth—including a gene inherited from Neanderthals—have been identified by a team co-led by UCL researchers. https://phys.org/news/2024-12-gene-inherited-neanderthals-tooth.html Evolution Thu, 12 Dec 2024 11:00:01 EST news653215167 New research exploring the roots of modern Japanese populations has linked the genetic signature of Jomon hunter-gatherers to a higher body mass index (BMI) among individuals, underlining that ancient human ancestors can leave a genetic legacy with impacts on health in modern day populations. https://phys.org/news/2024-11-genetic-legacy-jomon-hunter-linked.html Evolution Thu, 14 Nov 2024 12:22:53 EST news650809369 A team of geneticists and archaeologists affiliated with multiple institutions in France has uncovered skeletons in an ancient gravesite not far from Paris that show evidence of steppe migrant integration with Late Neolithic Europeans. The study is published in the journal Science Advances. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-gravesite-france-evidence-steppe-migrant.html Archaeology Thu, 20 Jun 2024 09:31:18 EDT news638094668 CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing has made possible a multitude of biomedical experiments, including studies that systematically turn off genes in cancer cells to look for ones that the cancer cells heavily depend on to survive and grow. These genes, or "cancer dependencies," are often promising drug targets. But new research shows that many of these CRISPR screening experiments rely on components, called CRISPR/Cas9 guides, that do not perform equally well in cells from people of all ancestries, which can cause CRISPR screens to miss cancer dependencies. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-crispr-screens-cancer-drug.html Biotechnology Sat, 15 Jun 2024 03:11:44 EDT news637639897 Dogs with Indigenous ancestry were eaten during a period of starvation at Jamestown, the first English settlement in North America in the 17th century, according to new research in American Antiquity. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-dna-analysis-reveals-jamestown-colony.html Archaeology Tue, 21 May 2024 19:10:01 EDT news635528161 A professor and a complex systems researcher at the University of Sydney has found, through the use of a quantitative measurement statistical tool, that instances of gender and racial discrimination occur in leadership positions at Australia's most influential universities. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-gender-racial-discrimination-uncovered-leadership.html Social Sciences Fri, 15 Mar 2024 11:49:35 EDT news629722172 In 1859, Charles Darwin coined the term "living fossils" to describe organisms that show little species diversity or physical differences from their ancestors in the fossil record. In a new study, Yale researchers provide the first evidence of a biological mechanism that explains how living fossils occur in nature. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-slowly-evolving-fossils-reveals-key.html Plants & Animals Mon, 04 Mar 2024 15:57:43 EST news628790260 When a Virgin Galactic commercial flight soared into space on 8 September 2023, there were two Virgin Galactic pilots, an instructor and three passengers on board—as well as two fossils of ancient prehuman relatives from South Africa. Timothy Nash, a businessman, carried a clavicle belonging to Australopithecus sediba and the thumb bone of a Homo naledi specimen. The fossils' brief journey—the VSS Unity's flight lasted just an hour—was organized by paleontologist Lee Berger, who led the team that discovered and described Homo naledi in 2015. Berger was granted an export permit in July by the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) to take the fossils from the country to the US launch site for VSS Unity. SAHRA is a "national administrative body responsible for the protection of South Africa's cultural heritage." https://phys.org/news/2023-09-south-african-hominin-fossils-space.html Archaeology Mon, 25 Sep 2023 13:28:30 EDT news614867307 Intimate partner violence is a prevalent and growing issue in Canada. According to Statistics Canada, there were 114,132 police-reported victims of intimate partner violence in 2021, marking the seventh consecutive year of increased rates of violence. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-poor-police-canada-endangering-2slgbtq.html Social Sciences Tue, 05 Sep 2023 12:31:04 EDT news613135861 Cattle may seem like uniquely American animals, steeped in the lore of cowboys, cattle drives and sprawling ranches. But cattle didn't exist on the American continents prior to the arrival of the Spanish, who brought livestock with them from Europe by way of the Canary Islands. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-ancient-dna-reveals-early-african.html Plants & Animals Tue, 08 Aug 2023 11:36:00 EDT news610713355 Nearly all life, from bacteria to humans, uses the same genetic code. This code acts as a dictionary, translating genes into the amino acids used to build proteins. The universality of the genetic code indicates a common ancestry among all living organisms and the essential role this code plays in the structure, function and regulation of biological cells. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-genetic-code-lots-words-thinginformation.html Cell & Microbiology Thu, 27 Jul 2023 11:39:07 EDT news609676736 Recent archaeogenetic studies have shown that human migrations and individual mobility played a bigger role in prehistory than previously anticipated. With the movement of people, also culture, technical know-how, language and social practices were often spreading, leading to sometimes fundamental changes in lifestyle and genetic ancestry. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-genetic-evidence-early-contact-farmers.html Archaeology Wed, 19 Jul 2023 12:21:35 EDT news608988089 A trio of biologists and environmental scientists, two with the University of Fribourg and the third with the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, has found that fully aquatic mammals, such as whales and porpoises, are very unlikely to evolve back into land animals. In their study, reported in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, B. M. Farina, S. Faurby and D. Silvestro conducted phylogenetic analyses of more than 5,000 mammalian species. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-phylogenetic-analysis-fully-aquatic-mammals.html Evolution Tue, 18 Jul 2023 10:10:09 EDT news608893804