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Pleistocene

An artist's impression of ice age Earth at the Pleistocene era. Source: Ittiz/ CC BY-SA 3.0

First Ice Age May Have Led to Epic Hominin Migration 900,000 Years Ago

About one million years ago there was a mass exodus of hominin species out of Africa and into Eurasia. Human ancestors fled their home continent in droves, raising questions about why this would have...
The skull of Paranthropus boisei, known as KNM ER 406, photographed at the Nairobi National Museum in August 2012.                    Source: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen/CC BY-SA 3.0

Paranthropus-Our Most Mysterious Extinct Cousins (Video)

In the tapestry of human evolution , the enigmatic Paranthropus emerges as a parallel cousin to our Homo ancestors. Discovered in South and East Africa in the late 1930s, these hominins, including...
Panoramic photograph of the rocky shore platform on the Larache area coast of Morocco where the 90000-year-old footprints were found. The area delimited by the dotted red line corresponds to the footprint discovery zone. Source: M. Sedrati, et al/Nature

90,000-Years-Old Footprints Discovered On Moroccan Beach

85 human footprints dating to 90,000-years-ago have been found on a beach in Morocco. But how did they get there, and what were the people doing? In 1964, when Margaret Fishback Powers wrote the...
The Steinheim skull, discovered alongside elephant and rhinoceros bones, has been dated to between 250,000 and 350,000 years. Source: YouTube Screenshot/Highly Compelling

The Oldest Homo Sapiens Skull Ever Discovered (Video)

The Steinheim skull, found on 24 July 1933 near Steinheim an der Murr, Germany, is a perplexing artifact in paleoanthropology , challenges the established narrative of human evolution. Dating back to...
A team of international archaeologists discovered life-sized wild camel carvings on a rock outcrop near the southern Nafud desert border in Saudi Arabia. Carvings are outlined in white to enhance visibility.         Source: Maria Guagnin, et al/Science

Carved Camels Ready for Copulation in Saudi Arabian Desert: Unknown Origin

An international team of archaeologists studying ancient rock art in Saudi Arabia is celebrating a new and surprising discovery. On a rock outcropping near the southern border of the Nafud desert ,...
A frigid apocalypse 1.1 million years ago led to an archaic human extinction in Europe. Source: Lazy_Bear / Adobe Stock.

Massive Climate Catastrophe Froze Europe’s Earliest Humans to Death

An interdisciplinary team of archaeologists, anthropologists and earth scientists have found evidence that a severe cooling event in the North Atlantic region approximately 1.1 million years ago...
A species of nematode similar to the 46,000 year old worms that have been resuscitated. 	Source: Hussmann/Adobe Stock

Have 46,000-year-old Nematodes in Suspended Animation Really Been Resuscitated?

For more than two decades scientists have been collecting frozen microbes from deep layers of the Siberian permafrost, to see if they can be thawed and brought back to life. In the most recent...
Carved giant sloth bones indicate humans in South America. Source: ©Mirian Pacheco/The Royal Society Publishing

Historical Timeline Shook: Human Arrival in South America Pushed Back to 25,000 Years Ago

Human arrival in the Americas has a long-disputed timeline, and new evidence supports pushing back the date for human arrival in South America to at least 25,000 years ago. The evidence? Remains of...
Environment around the La Brea Tar Pits, with Columbian mammoth herd in the background, by Charles Knight (1921) (Public Domain)

Tracking The Old Ways Of Ice Age Megafauna Hunters

While mammoths were hunted by early human populations in North America , Europe, Asia, and Africa, the primary cause of their extinction was changing climate, and disease. During the last Ice Age, in...
The fossil of a Homo erectus skull found in recent national civilization origin-tracing program. Source: Courtesy of the National Cultural Heritage Administration

Million-Year-Old Human Skull Found in China Reveals Evolutionary Secrets

Archaeologists in China have uncovered a human skull that is almost unimaginably old. While performing excavations in the central province of Hubei, a team of researchers affiliated with the Hubei...
The human brain has three parts and for millions of years it grew in size but 3,000 years ago it began to get smaller! 						Source: alionaprof / Adobe Stock

Three Thousand Years Ago Human Brain Size Decreased, Says Study

Through the process of greater efficiency, the human brain size began to shrink about 3,000 years ago and this is a huge new revelation in human evolution. The latest research study conclusions...
A closeup of a few of the 98 verified elephant bone tools found in Rome, Italy, which have been attributed to an archaic hominin species based on a recent study published in the Plos One journal.		Source: 	Plos One

Archaic Hominin Made Elephant Bone Tools 400,000 Years Ago, Study Finds

Archaeologists examining artifacts collected from a site in Italy found that an archaic hominin species had made elephant bone tools, including pointed tools for carving meat and wedge-shaped tools...
The research site at Abrigo de Navalmaíllo which has been found to be a Neanderthal hunting camp.  Source: CENIEH

76,000-Year-Old Neanderthal Hunting Camp Discovered In Madrid

A 76,000-year-old hunter’s camp has been discovered and examined beneath the Spanish capital of Madrid. Here, in blood-soaked times of glory when the hunting was good, Neanderthals butchered and...
A family of Pleistocene hominins on the beach was the poster image used by Spain’s National Center for Research on Human Evolution (CENIEH) for their research into prehistoric human migrations that required crossing large bodies of water, especially sea straits.      Source: CENIEH

Study: How Pleistocene Hominins Crossed The Seas A Million Years Ago

A team of German and Spanish researchers has published a new computational model demonstrating how Pleistocene hominins crossed the sea and sea straits between one and two million years ago...
A pack of Eurasian hunting dogs, like the one discovered at Dmanisi, chasing prey, while a disabled member of the pack is running far behind; incapable of contributing to the hunt, its survival depends on the pack-mates. Source: Mauricio Antón / Nature

Earliest European Hunting Dogs Supported Their Weak

The “earliest evidence of the arrival of hunting dogs in Europe” discovered to date has been announced in a new article published in Nature . The Eurasian hunting dog remains were unearthed at the...
Archival photograph showing a double burial from the Jebel Sahaba cemetery in Sudan, with pencils marking the position of associated lithic artifacts. Source: Wendorf Archives of the British Museum/Scientific Reports

Jebel Sahaba Shines Light on Horrors of Earliest Human Warfare

13,400 years ago individuals were engaged in armed conflict on the east bank of the Nile in what is now northern Sudan. A fresh analysis of human remains from the prehistoric cemetery of Jebel Sahaba...
Sunrise at Laomei Green Reef on the coast north of Taipei, Taiwan, where researchers found scant evidence of early human impact on animal extinction.

New Study Reveals the Real Impact of Early Humans on Animal Extinction

It has been told and retold and accepted as an unproven truth that early human beings arrived on uninhabited islands and forced other species to make way for them, eventually driving them to...
A March 2021 group photo of the archaeologists on the team that brought the Navarra Loizu Man’s remains from deep within the cave where they were first found in 2017.

11,700-Year-Old ‘Loizu Man’ Skeleton Still Revealing Secrets

While surveying a cave known as Errotalde I, near the town of Erro in the province of Navarra in northern Spain, a group of spelunkers discovered something most unexpected. After following multiple...
Somewhere in Southwestern North America during the late Pleistocene, a pack of dire wolves (Canis dirus) are feeding on their bison kill, while a pair of gray wolves (Canis lupus) approach in the hopes of scavenging. One of the dire wolves rushes in to confront the gray wolves, and their confrontation allows a comparison of the bigger, larger-headed and reddish-brown dire wolf with its smaller, gray relative. Source: Mauricio Antón/ Nature

Beyond Game of Thrones: Study Reveals Secrets of Real Dire Wolves

Have you ever heard of dire wolves? You’ll probably say “Yes” if you are a fan of the TV show Game of Thrones . This canine species appears in the iconic TV series, where it is known as a ‘direwolf’...
New Theory Links Dog Domestication And Excess Protein

New Theory Links Dog Domestication And Excess Protein

A team of Finnish researchers have developed a new theory about dog domestication and the evolution of dogs from wolves. In an article appearing in the January 7 edition of the peer-reviewed journal...
10,000-Year-Old Footprints Tell Amazing Story of Human Encounter with Megafauna

10,000-Year-Old Footprints Tell Amazing Story of Human Encounter with Megafauna

Archaeologists at White Sands National Park in New Mexico examining a 10,000-year-old track of human footprints , have made more fascinating discoveries. But they’ve also unearthed a trowel-full of...
The most complete of the ten ice age artworks discovered on Jersey in the English Channel Islands, dating back some 15,000 years. Source: Natural History Museum

Ten Amazing Ice Age Artworks By The Magdalenians Discovered In England

Ten carved stones discovered in England a few years ago have been dated back to the last ice age . Researchers discovered the ten ice age artworks between 2014 and 2018 at an ancient hearth at Les...
Adaptation to harsh climates and isolated lands helped Late Pleistocene humans outlive other hominins.        Source: Gorodenkoff

Last Hominin Standing: Extreme Adaptation of Late Pleistocene Humans

How is our species unique compared to other hominins? What did Late Pleistocene humans have that their neighbors lacked? They obviously interacted, but Homo sapiens survived when others could not. A...

Radar Detects Invisible ‘Ghost Tracks’ of Humans and Mammoths

Matthew Robert Bennett / The Conversation The mammoth lumbers through our imaginations when we think about the world during the most recent Ice Age . They’re just one of many giant creatures that our...

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