Oldest-known stone tools pre-date Homo

Scientists working in the desert badlands of northwestern Kenya have found stone tools dating back 3.3 million years, long before the advent of modern humans, and by far the oldest such artifacts yet discovered. The tools, ...

New ancestor? Scientists ponder DNA from Siberia

(PhysOrg.com) -- An international team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig has sequenced ancient mitochondrial DNA from a finger bone found in southern Siberia. The bone is ...

Largest group of fossil humans are Neanderthals after all

(Phys.org) -- The world's largest known sample of fossil humans has been classified as the species Homo heidelbergensis but in fact are early Neanderthals, according to a study by Prof Chris Stringer of the Natural History ...

New microfossils suggest earlier rise in complex life

Microfossils from Western Australia may capture a jump in the complexity of life that coincided with the rise of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere and oceans, according to an international team of scientists.

Archaeopteryx and the dinosaur-bird family tree

The magpie-sized Archaeopteryx had bird and dinosaur features and helped show that birds evolved from dinosaurs. However, recent research in the journal Nature questions its position in the dinosaur-bird family tree.

Origin of Sino-Tibetan language family revealed by new research

The Sino-Tibetan language family includes early literary languages, such as Chinese, Tibetan and Burmese, and is represented by more than 400 modern languages spoken in China, India, Burma, and Nepal. It is one of the most ...

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