Australopithecus afarensis, a human ancestor could have given birth in a way that combines the childbirth practices of chimpanzees and human beings a team of scientists have claimed. They reported...
Ever since Darwin brought up the fact that the human race had apes as distant ancestors, modern humans have been uneasy and a little defensive. They mocked the simian nature of Australopithecus ,...
Researchers at the Sterkfontein Caves in South Africa, famous for the discovery of ‘Little Foot’ and a ream of other ancient hominin remains, have yielded dating results that could overturn the...
A team of scientists has analyzed a set of two-million-year-old so-called ‘missing link’ fossils. Unlike anything presented before, their new study shows how the ancient human relative,...
In the Kalahari Desert of South Africa, has produced a cornucopia of wonders for archaeologists searching for the truth about human origins. Cave art, stone tools, burned bones, soil, and ash, and a...
New genetic research shows early humans’ brains were “much more ape-like” than what is measured in modern humans. What this means is that the first waves of human ancestors to migrate out of Africa...
Amélie Beaudet / The Conversation In his book Wonderful Life , Professor Stephen Jay Gould – an evolutionary biologist, paleontologist and widely-read popular science author – described the evolution...
In 1924, a 3-year-old child’s skull found in South Africa forever changed how people think about human origins. The Taung Child, our first encounter with an ancient group of proto-humans or hominins...
Researchers have found that early humans such as the famous ‘Lucy’ were not as smart as the great apes. Using new methods, they have been able to determine that early humans did not have the same...
By Renaud Joannes-Boyau , Ian Moffat , Justin W. Adams , and Luca Fiorenza / The Conversation Humans’ distant ancestor Australopithecus africanus had a unique approach to raising their young, as...
The announcement of a new species of ancient human (more correctly hominin) from the Philippines , reported today in Nature , will cause a lot of head-shaking among anthropologists and archaeologists...
In 2015, scientists announced an earlier time frame than previously estimated for the lifetime of an early proto-human dubbed Little Foot – as much as 3.67 million years ago. The nearly complete...
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...
South Africa's status as a major cradle in the African nursery of humankind has been reinforced with today's unveiling of "Little Foot," the country's oldest, virtually complete fossil human ancestor...
Footprints belonging to a group of early hominins who lived 3.6 million years ago were recently uncovered in Tanzania. The footprints indicate Australopithecus afarensis probably had a gorilla-like...
Scientists have identified a particularly lethal form of cancer on the fossilized toe bone of an early human relative who lived about 1.7 million years ago in South Africa. The tumor is the oldest...
New research suggests that humans became the large-brained, large-bodied animals we are today because of natural selection to increase brain size. The work, published in the journal Current...
New fossils from Kenya suggest that an early hominid species -- Australopithecus afarensis -- lived far eastward beyond the Great Rift Valley and much farther than previously thought. An...
In 2015, DNA analysis provided deeper insight into the lives of our ancient ancestors. Studies of their appearance, diet, living conditions, and the human family tree, were all hot topics. Research...
Homo Naledi brings new surprises that could change the history of evolution for modern humans. Is this finally one of the missing links in human evolution that paleontologists have been waiting for?...
For a long time in archaeology, and even in the popular media, there was discussion of a missing link in the archaeological/paleontological fossil record between apes and humans. In 1911, Englishman...
Some animals, including chimpanzees, crows, elephants, sea otters and dolphins, are known to use tools to extract food from their environment and for other functions. But what really sets people...
Make room, Lucy! A fossil of a 3.4 million-year-old hominin has been found by researchers who say this could be an entirely new species of early human, previously unknown to history. This new and...
Half a million years before early humans arrived on the scene, the prehistoric hominins living in East Africa were shaping tools out of stone. These rare artifacts have been discovered by scientists...