The rotating shoulders and extending elbows that allow humans to reach for a high shelf or toss a ball with friends may have first evolved as a natural braking system for our primate ancestors who simply needed to get out ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 5, 2023
0
658
Quintessential human traits such as large brains first appear in Homo erectus nearly 2 million years ago. This evolutionary transition towards human-like traits is often linked to a major dietary shift involving greater meat ...
Evolution
Jan 24, 2022
25
1808
A team of researchers from Japan, Hong Kong and Ethiopia has found a hand ax that they believe was made by a possibly direct human ancestor in what is now modern Ethiopia. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National ...
An international research team led by scientists from the U.S. and Spain, and including a University of Michigan geologist, has discovered a nearly complete cranium of an early human ancestor, estimated to about 1.5 million ...
Archaeology
Mar 5, 2020
16
1130
Homo erectus, one of modern humans' direct ancestors, was a wandering bunch. After the species dispersed from Africa about two million years ago, it colonized the ancient world, which included Asia and possibly Europe.
Archaeology
Dec 18, 2019
3
271
New research disputes a long-held view that our earliest tool-bearing ancestors contributed to the demise of large mammals in Africa over the last several million years. Instead, the researchers argue that long-term environmental ...
Archaeology
Nov 22, 2018
20
344
Half-sized humans who lived 700,000 years ago were almost certainly the ancestors of enigmatic "hobbits" whose fossils were found on the same Indonesian isle in 2013, scientists stunned by their own discovery reported Wednesday.
Archaeology
Jun 8, 2016
29
693
Scientists say they've discovered a new member of the human family tree, revealed by a huge trove of bones in a barely accessible, pitch-dark chamber of a cave in South Africa.
Archaeology
Sep 10, 2015
31
1940
Anthropologists on Wednesday said they had found the earliest engraving in human history on a fossilised mollusc shell some 500,000 years old, unearthed in colonial-era Indonesia.
Archaeology
Dec 3, 2014
20
1
The discovery of a 1.8-million-year-old skull of a human ancestor buried under a medieval Georgian village provides a vivid picture of early evolution and indicates our family tree may have fewer branches than some believe, ...
Archaeology
Oct 17, 2013
57
2
