What evolved first—a dexterous hand or an agile foot?

Resolving a long-standing mystery in human evolution, new research from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute indicates that early hominids developed finger dexterity and tool use ability before the development of bipedal locomotion.

Were 'hobbit' hominids island dwarfs?

Japanese scientists on Tuesday waded into a row over so-called "hobbit" hominids whose remains, found on a remote Indonesian island a decade ago, have unleashed one of the fiercest disputes in anthropology.

Neanderthal brawn lost out to social human brain

Neanderthals' bigger eyes and bodies meant they had less brain space to dedicate to social networking, which may explain why they died out and Homo sapiens conquered the planet, according to a new study.

Shared genes with Neanderthal relatives not unusual

During human evolution our ancestors mated with Neanderthals, but also with other related hominids. In this week's online edition of PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), researchers from Uppsala University ...

New technologies challenge old ideas about early hominid diets

New assessments by researchers using the latest high-tech tools to study the diets of early hominids are challenging long-held assumptions about what our ancestors ate, says a study by the University of Colorado Boulder and ...

Homo erectus was first master of the kitchen: study

The first ancestor of modern humans to have mastered the art of cooking was likely homo erectus, which evolved around 1.9 million years ago, according to a US study published Monday.

Spanish researchers describe new hominid

Researchers from the Institut Català de Paleontologia (ICP), from Universitat Autňnoma de Barcelona, directed by professor Salvador Moyà-Solà, publish this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) ...

page 3 from 5