Anthropology News

June 17, 2025

Top Headlines

New Velvet Worm Species a First for the Arid Karoo

May 30, 2025 — A new species of velvet worm, Peripatopsis barnardi, represents the first ever species from the arid Karoo, which indicates that the area was likely historically more forested than at present. In the Cape Fold Mountains, we now know that every ...

New Method Provides the Key to Accessing Proteins in Ancient Human Remains

May 30, 2025 — A new method could soon unlock the vast repository of biological information held in the proteins of ancient soft tissues. The findings could open up a new era for palaeobiological ...

Dinosaurs Could Hold Key to Cancer Discoveries

May 29, 2025 — New techniques used to analyze soft tissue in dinosaur fossils may hold the key to new cancer discoveries. Researchers have analyzed dinosaur fossils using advanced paleoproteomic techniques, a method that holds promise for uncovering molecular data ...

Long Shot Science Leads to Revised Age for Land-Animal Ancestor

May 29, 2025 — The fossils of ancient salamander-like creatures in Scotland are among the most well-preserved examples of early stem tetrapods -- some of the first animals to make the transition from water to land. Thanks to new research, scientists believe that ...

Anthropologists Spotlight Human Toll of Glacier Loss

May 29, 2025 — Anthropologists have examined the societal consequences of global glacier loss. This article appears alongside new research that estimates that more than three-quarters of the world's glacier mass could disappear by the end of the century under ...

Leprosy Existed in America Long Before Arrival of Europeans

May 29, 2025 — Long considered a disease brought to the Americas by European colonizers, leprosy may actually have a much older history on the American continent. Scientists reveal that a recently identified second species of bacteria responsible for leprosy, ...

Does Planting Trees Really Help Cool the Planet?

May 29, 2025 — Replanting forests can help cool the planet even more than some scientists once believed, especially in the tropics. But even if every tree lost since the mid-19th century is replanted, the total effect won't cancel out human-generated ...

Rock Record Illuminates Oxygen History

May 29, 2025 — A new study reveals that the aerobic nitrogen cycle in the ocean may have occurred about 100 million years before oxygen began to significantly accumulate in the atmosphere, based on nitrogen isotope analysis from ancient South African rock cores. ...

Chemists Recreate How RNA Might Have Reproduced for First Time

May 29, 2025 — Chemists have demonstrated how RNA (ribonucleic acid) might have replicated itself on early Earth -- a key process in the origin of ...

Bed Bugs Are Most Likely the First Human Pest, New Research Shows

May 28, 2025 — Researchers compared the whole genome sequence of two genetically distinct lineages of bed bug, and their findings indicate bed bugs may well be the first true urban ...

A Sweeping Study of 7,000 Years of Monuments in South Arabia

May 28, 2025 — New research brings together 7,000 years of history in South Arabia to show how ancient pastoralists changed placement and construction of monuments over time in the face of environmental and cultural ...

Oldest Whale Bone Tools Discovered

May 28, 2025 — Humans were making tools from whale bones as far back as 20,000 years ago, according to a new study. This discovery broadens our understanding of early human use of whale remains and offers valuable insight into the marine ecology of the ...

Latest Headlines

updated 3:24am EDT

The 10,000-Mile March Through Fire That Made Dinosaurs Possible

June 13, 2025 — Despite Earth's most devastating mass extinction wiping out over 80% of marine life and half of land species, a group of early reptiles called archosauromorphs not only survived but thrived, ...

What a Dinosaur Ate 100 Million Years ago—Preserved in a Fossilized Time Capsule

June 10, 2025 — A prehistoric digestive time capsule has been unearthed in Australia: plant fossils found inside a sauropod dinosaur offer the first definitive ...

2,000 Miles Through Rivers and Ice: Mapping Neanderthals’ Hidden Superhighways Across Eurasia

June 10, 2025 — Neanderthals may have trekked thousands of miles across Eurasia much faster than we ever imagined. New computer simulations suggest they used river ...

New Evidence Reveals Advanced Maritime Technology in the Philippines 35,000 Years Ago

June 9, 2025 — In a bold reimagining of Southeast Asia s prehistory, scientists reveal that the Philippine island of Mindoro was a hub of human innovation and ...

Drone Tech Uncovers 1,000-Year-Old Native American Farms in Michigan

June 7, 2025 — In the dense forests of Michigan s Upper Peninsula, archaeologists have uncovered a massive ancient agricultural system that rewrites what we thought we knew about Native American farming. Dating ...

3,500-Year-Old Graves Reveal Secrets That Rewrite Bronze Age History

June 6, 2025 — Bronze Age life changed radically around 1500 BC in Central Europe. New research reveals diets narrowed, millet was introduced, migration slowed, and social systems became looser challenging old ...

Researchers Recreate Ancient Egyptian Blues

June 2, 2025 — Researchers have recreated the world's oldest synthetic pigment, called Egyptian blue, which was used in ancient Egypt about 5,000 years ...

A Root Development Gene That's Older Than Root Development

May 26, 2025 — A gene that regulates the development of roots in vascular plants is also involved in the organ development of liverworts -- land plants so old they don't even have proper roots. The discovery ...

Earliest Use of Psychoactive and Medicinal Plant 'Harmal' Identified in Iron Age Arabia

May 23, 2025 — A new study uses metabolic profiling to uncover ancient knowledge systems behind therapeutic and psychoactive plant use in ancient ...

Different Phases of Evolution During Ice Age

May 23, 2025 — Cold-adapted animals started to evolve 2.6 million years ago when the permanent ice at the poles became more prevalent. There followed a time when the continental ice sheets expanded and contracted ...

Ancient DNA Used to Map Evolution of Fever-Causing Bacteria

May 22, 2025 — Researchers have analyzed ancient DNA from Borrelia recurrentis, a type of bacteria that causes relapsing fever, pinpointing when it evolved to spread through lice rather than ticks, and how it ...

Scientists Have Figured out How Extinct Giant Ground Sloths Got So Big and Where It All Went Wrong

May 22, 2025 — Scientists have analyzed ancient DNA and compared more than 400 fossils from 17 natural history museums to figure out how and why extinct sloths got so ...

Tapping Into the World's Largest Gold Reserves

May 22, 2025 — Earth's largest gold reserves are not kept inside Fort Knox, the United States Bullion Depository. In fact, they are hidden much deeper in the ground than one would expect. More than 99.999% of ...

'Selfish' Genes Called Introners Proven to Be a Major Source of Genetic Complexity

May 22, 2025 — A new study proves that a type of genetic element called 'introners' are the mechanism by which many introns spread within and between species, also providing evidence of eight instances in ...

Toothache from Eating Something Cold? Blame These Ancient Fish

May 21, 2025 — New research shows that dentine, the inner layer of teeth that transmits sensory information to nerves inside the pulp, first evolved as sensory tissue in the armored exoskeletons of ancient ...

'Sharkitecture:' A Nanoscale Look Inside a Blacktip Shark's Skeleton

May 20, 2025 — Using synchrotron X-ray nanotomography with detailed 3D imaging and in-situ mechanical testing, researchers are peering inside shark skeletons at the nanoscale, revealing a microscopic ...

Research Team Traces Evolutionary History of Bacterial Circadian Clock on Ancient Earth

May 20, 2025 — To better understand the circadian clock in modern-day cyanobacteria, a research team has studied ancient timekeeping systems. They examined the oscillation of the clock proteins KaiA, KaiB, and KaiC ...

Ancient Ocean Sediments Link Changes in Currents to Cooling of Northern Hemisphere 3.6 Million Years Ago

May 16, 2025 — New research from an international group looking at ancient sediment cores in the North Atlantic has for the first time shown a strong correlation between sediment changes and a marked period of ...

Very Different Mammals Follow the Same Rules of Behavior

May 16, 2025 — In the natural world -- where predators pounce, prey flee, and group members feed and sleep in solidarity -- animal behavior is glorious in its variety. Now, new research suggests there may be an ...

Asians Made Humanity's Longest Prehistoric Migration and Shaped the Genetic Landscape in the Americas

May 15, 2025 — A groundbreaking international study has revealed that early Asians undertook humanity s longest known prehistoric migration walking more than 20,000 kilometers over thousands of years from North ...

Scientists Use Fossils to Assess the Health of Florida's Largest Remaining Seagrass Bed: Surprisingly, It's Doing Well!

May 15, 2025 — A new study shows that seagrass ecosystems along the northern half of Florida's Gulf Coast have remained relatively healthy and undisturbed for the last several thousand ...

Dexterity and Climbing Ability: How Ancient Human Relatives Used Their Hands

May 14, 2025 — Scientists have found new evidence for how our fossil human relatives in South Africa may have used their hands. Researchers investigated variation in finger bone morphology to determine that South ...

Fossil Tracks Show Reptiles Appeared on Earth Up to 40 Million Years Earlier

May 14, 2025 — The origin of reptiles on Earth has been shown to be up to 40 million years earlier than previously thought -- thanks to evidence discovered at an Australian fossil site that represents a critical ...

Europe's Forest Plants Thrive Best in Light-Rich, Semi-Open Woodlands -- Kept Open by Large Herbivores

May 14, 2025 — Before Homo sapiens arrived, Europe's forests were not dense and dark but shaped by open and light-rich woodland landscapes. Researchers have analyzed 917 native forest plant species in Central ...

Australia's Oldest Prehistoric Tree Frog Hops 22 Million Years Back in Time

May 14, 2025 — Scientists have now discovered the oldest ancestor for all the Australian tree frogs, with distant links to the tree frogs of South ...

UV Light and CT Scans Helped Scientists Unlock Hidden Details in a Beautifully-Preserved Fossil Archaeopteryx

May 14, 2025 — Archaeopteryx is the fossil that clearly demonstrated Darwin's views. It's the oldest known fossil bird, and it helps show that all birds -- including the ones alive today -- emerged from ...

From Prehistoric Resident to Runaway Pet: First Tegu Fossil Found in the U.S.

May 12, 2025 — Originally from South America, the charismatic tegu made its way to the United States via the pet trade of the 1990s. But a recent discovery shows these reptiles are no strangers to the region -- ...

Vast Aztec Trade Networks Behind Ancient Obsidian Artifacts

May 12, 2025 — Researchers analyzed 788 obsidian artifacts from Tenochtitlan, revealing that the Mexica (Aztec) Empire sourced this important material from at least eight different locations, including regions ...

First Fossil Evidence of Endangered Tropical Tree Discovered

May 9, 2025 — Scientists have discovered fossil evidence of an endangered, living tropical tree species. The unprecedented find was made in Brunei, a country on the large island of Borneo, and reveals a critical ...

Researchers Map 7,000-Year-Old Genetic Mutation That Protects Against HIV

May 9, 2025 — Modern HIV medicine is based on a common genetic mutation. Now, researchers have traced where and when the mutation arose -- and how it protected our ancestors from ancient ...