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Evolution & Human Origins

We bring you all the latest news and discoveries relating to human origins and evolution. The more fossils that are unearthed, the more researchers admit that there is much that is still unknown about the evolution of humans.

3.6-Million-Year-Old Footprints Imply That an Ancient Hominin Was a Tall, Dominant, and Polygamous Male
16 December, 2016 - 14:51 Theodoros Karasavvas

3.6-Million-Year-Old Footprints Imply That an Ancient Hominin Was a Tall, Dominant, and Polygamous Male

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...
Jersey was a Must-See Tourist Destination for Neanderthals for Over 100,000 Years
16 December, 2016 - 03:40 ancient-origins

Jersey was a Must-See Tourist Destination for Neanderthals for Over 100,000 Years

New research led by the University of Southampton shows Neanderthals kept coming back to a coastal cave site in Jersey from at least 180,000 years ago until around 40,000 years ago. As part of a re-...
How (Most) Humans Lost Their Tails - From Fish to Tetrapods to Apes to Homo Sapiens
14 December, 2016 - 21:48 Mark Miller

How (Most) Humans Lost Their Tails - From Fish to Tetrapods to Apes to Homo Sapiens

Did you know that human embryos early in development have tails that later fail to grow for a lack of signaling from the genes? We end up with the coccyx at the end of our spines that protrudes a bit...
Evidence of Unknown Extinct Human Relative Found in DNA Study of Melanesians
30 October, 2016 - 21:04 ancient-origins

Evidence of Unknown Extinct Human Relative Found in DNA Study of Melanesians

Traces of long-lost human cousins may be hiding in modern people’s DNA, a new computer analysis suggests. People from Melanesia, a region in the South Pacific encompassing Papua New Guinea and...
Neanderthal
25 October, 2016 - 03:48 ancient-origins

Ancient Human History More Complex Than Previously Thought, Researchers Say

Relationships between the ancestors of modern humans and other archaic populations such as Neanderthals and Denisovans were likely more complex than previously thought, involving interbreeding within...
DNA Study Unravels Mystery Behind Origins of First Pacific Islanders
5 October, 2016 - 00:40 ancient-origins

DNA Study Unravels Mystery Behind Origins of First Pacific Islanders

More than 3,000 years ago, a group of people set out from the Solomon Island chain in the southwestern edge of the Pacific Ocean and steered their outrigger canoes toward the horizon, with no land as...
How Breeding with an Ancient Human Species gave Tibetans their Head for Heights
2 October, 2016 - 21:53 ancient-origins

How Breeding with an Ancient Human Species gave Tibetans their Head for Heights

A recent study of the DNA of Tibetans has looked at the gene underlying their ability to live in the low-oxygen conditions at high altitudes. It found that this gene has come from an unexpected...
DNA Study Finds Aboriginal Australians are Oldest Civilization in the World
26 September, 2016 - 00:55 ancient-origins

DNA Study Finds Aboriginal Australians are Oldest Civilization in the World

Australia has one of the longest histories of continuous human occupation outside Africa. But who exactly were the first people to settle there? Such a question has obvious political implications and...
Ancient Jewelers: Scientists Confirm Body Ornamentation Belonged to Neanderthals
24 September, 2016 - 03:40 ancient-origins

Ancient Jewelers: Scientists Confirm Body Ornamentation Belonged to Neanderthals

Researchers from the University of York have helped to solve an archaeological dispute -- confirming that Neanderthals were responsible for producing tools and artifacts previously argued by some to...
Humans Wiped Out the Hobbit: New Study Suggests Homo Sapiens Caused Extinction of Tiny Homo Floresiensis Species
23 September, 2016 - 21:46 aprilholloway

Humans Wiped Out the Hobbit: New Study Suggests Homo Sapiens Caused Extinction of Tiny Homo Floresiensis Species

In October 2004, excavation of fragmentary skeletal remains from the island of Flores in Indonesia yielded what was called "the most important find in human evolution for 100 years." Its discoverers...
Smarter Brains Are Blood-Thirsty Brains
1 September, 2016 - 03:37 ancient-origins

Smarter Brains Are Blood-Thirsty Brains

A University of Adelaide-led project has overturned the theory that the evolution of human intelligence was simply related to the size of the brain -- but rather linked more closely to the supply of...
The Death of Lucy: Has a 3.2 Million-Year-Old Mystery Finally Been Solved?
30 August, 2016 - 21:59 Alicia McDermott

The Death of Lucy: Has a 3.2 Million-Year-Old Mystery Finally Been Solved?

Scientists analyzing the bones of the Australopithecus Afarensis skeleton known as ‘Lucy’ have suggested that she died from injuries sustained by falling from a tree. They say that fractures present...
50,000-Year-Old Needle Found in Siberian Cave AND It Was Not Made by Homo Sapiens
24 August, 2016 - 00:45 ancient-origins

50,000-Year-Old Needle Found in Siberian Cave AND It Was Not Made by Homo Sapiens

By The Siberian Times reporter A sensational discovery in Denisova Cave is at least 50,000-years-old BUT it wasn't made by Homo sapiens. The 7-centimeter (2 3/4 inch) needle was made and used by our...
Schizophrenia Emerged After Humans Diverged from Neanderthals
19 August, 2016 - 03:49 ancient-origins

Schizophrenia Emerged After Humans Diverged from Neanderthals

Schizophrenia poses an evolutionary enigma. The disorder has existed throughout recorded human history and persists despite its severe effects on thought and behavior, and its reduced rates of...
New research challenges a previous view that humans got to America via this area, where an ice-free corridor existed during the last ice age.
12 August, 2016 - 00:48 ancient-origins

Textbook Story of How Humans Populated America is Biologically Unviable, Study Finds

Using ancient DNA, researchers have created a unique picture of how a prehistoric migration route evolved over thousands of years – revealing that it could not have been used by the first people to...
Biggest Known Genetic Difference Between Humans and Neanderthals May Be Related to Autism
7 August, 2016 - 14:50 Alicia McDermott

Biggest Known Genetic Difference Between Humans and Neanderthals May Be Related to Autism

A recent study says that a genetic change suddenly arose in the primate family tree about about 280,000 years ago. The researchers claim it is responsible for the largest genetic difference between...
A view of the fossilized, 1.7-million-year-old hominin toe bone upon which the cancerous tumor was diagnosed.
29 July, 2016 - 14:49 Mark Miller

Researchers Diagnose Earliest Known Cancer on 1.7-Million-Year-Old Hominin Fossil

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...
A model of the face of an adult female Homo erectus. Reconstruction by John Gurche, Smithsonian Museum of Natural History
26 July, 2016 - 02:58 aprilholloway

Scientists Say A Mystery Species Bred with Ancient Humans in Distant Past

A new study of the genomes of Australasians has revealed sections of DNA that do not match any known hominin species. The dramatic findings mean that a mystery species bred with ancient humans in the...
An Illustration of ancient farmers. Copyright Nicholls (2008)
16 July, 2016 - 03:41 ancient-origins

Ancient Skeletons Change History: Farming Invented Multiple Times Across the Globe

An international research team led by Mainz palaeogeneticists demonstrates that populations in the ancient Fertile Crescent are the ancestors of modern day South Asians but not of Europeans...
Painting of Neanderthals by Charles Robert Knight, 1920
7 July, 2016 - 14:47 Mark Miller

Neanderthal Group Cannibalized their Dead and Used Human Bones as Tools

Evidence shows Neanderthals were killing each other and eating the remains about 40,000 years ago in a cave in Belgium, new research shows. They apparently extracted marrow from the bones and used...
Inbred Neanderthals Left Humans with a Genetic Burden
7 June, 2016 - 21:44 ancient-origins

Inbred Neanderthals Left Humans with a Genetic Burden

The Neanderthal genome included harmful mutations that made the hominids around 40% less reproductively fit than modern humans, according to estimates published in the latest issue of the journal...
The mammoth was found on the left bank of Yenisey river, not far from Sopochnaya Karga meterological station.
1 June, 2016 - 14:46 ancient-origins

The smoking gun 'proving ancient man killed woolly mammoth 45,000 years ago'

By Anna Liesowska / Siberian Times When Science journal earlier this year highlighted an ancient woolly mammoth with suspected spear wounds it provoked media interest around the world. Until now, the...
2,500-Year-Old Phoenician DNA Linked to Rare and Ancient European Ancestry
27 May, 2016 - 21:36 Alicia McDermott

2,500-Year-Old Phoenician DNA Linked to Rare and Ancient European Ancestry

Researchers have sequenced the first complete mitochondrial genome of an ancient Phoenician. The results of the studies of the remains of a man called the "Young Man of Byrsa" and "Ariche” has linked...
The Genetic History of Ice Age Europe
5 May, 2016 - 21:53 ancient-origins

The Genetic History of Ice Age Europe

Analyses of ancient DNA from prehistoric humans paint a picture of dramatic population change in Europe from 45,000 to 7,000 years ago, according to a new study led by Howard Hughes Medical Institute...

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