Early Humans News

November 20, 2024

Top Headlines

Earliest Evidence of Humans Using Fire to Shape the Landscape of Tasmania

Nov. 16, 2024 — Some of the first human beings to arrive in Tasmania, over 41,000 years ago, used fire to shape and manage the landscape, about 2,000 years earlier than previously ...

The Secrets of Fossil Teeth Revealed by the Synchrotron: A Long Childhood Is the Prelude to the Evolution of a Large Brain

Nov. 13, 2024 — Could social bonds be the key to human big brains? A study of the fossil teeth of early Homo from Georgia dating back 1.77 million years reveals a prolonged childhood despite a small brain and an ...

New Insights Into the Denisovans: New Hominin Group That Interbred With Modern Day Humans

Nov. 8, 2024 — Scientists believe individuals of the most recently discovered 'hominin' group (the Denisovans) that interbred with modern day humans passed on some of their genes via multiple, distinct ...

Evolutionary Paths Vastly Differ for Birds, Bats

Nov. 1, 2024 — New research has found that, unlike birds, the evolution of bats' wings and legs is tightly coupled, which may have prevented them from filling as many ecological niches as ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:26pm EST

More Evidence That Europe's Ancient Landscapes Were Open Woodlands: Oak, Hazel and Yew Were Abundant

Nov. 12, 2024 — A new study finds that the disturbance-demanding plant species oak, hazel and yew were abundant in Europe's forests before modern humans arrived, ...

Ancient DNA Brings to Life History of the Iconic Aurochs, Whose Tale Is Intertwined With Climate Change and Human Culture

Oct. 30, 2024 — Geneticists have deciphered the prehistory of aurochs -- the animals that were the focus of some of the most iconic early human art -- by analyzing ...

'Well-Man' Thrown from Castle Identified from 800-Year-Old Norse Saga

Oct. 25, 2024 — A passage in the Norse Sverris Saga, the 800-year-old story of King Sverre Sigurdsson, describes a military raid that occurred in AD 1197, during which a body was thrown into a well at Sverresborg ...

Turtle Genome Provides New Clues on the Evolution of Vertebrates

Oct. 21, 2024 — Scientists have generated the genome assemblies of two hidden-neck turtles, unpublished until now. The results, which revealed a new three-dimensional structure of the genome within the phylogenetic ...

Traces of Ancient Immigration Patterns to Japan Found in 2000-Year-Old Genome

Oct. 14, 2024 — A joint research group has demonstrated that the majority of immigration to the Japanese Archipelago in the Yayoi and Kofun periods (between 3000 BCE ...

Early Human Species Benefited from Food Diversity in Steep Mountainous Terrain

Oct. 9, 2024 — A new study shows that the patchwork of different ecosystems found in mountainous regions played a key role in the evolution of ...

Genomic Study Identifies Human, Animal Hair in 'Man-Eater' Lions' Teeth

Oct. 11, 2024 — Scientists analyzed hairs extracted from the broken teeth of two 19th century 'man-eater' lions. Their analysis revealed DNA from giraffe, human, oryx, waterbuck, wildebeest and zebra as prey, along ...

Fossils and Fires: Insights Into Early Modern Human Activity in the Jungles of Southeast Asia

Oct. 10, 2024 — Studying microscopic layers of dirt dug from the Tam Pa Ling cave site in northeastern Laos has provided a team of archaeologists further insights ...

Underwater Caves Yield New Clues About Sicily's First Residents

Oct. 9, 2024 — Archaeological surveys suggest that coastal and underwater cave sites in southern Sicily contain important new clues about the path and fate of early human migrants to the ...

Do Coyotes Have Puppy Dog Eyes? New Study Reveals Wild Canines Share Dog's Famous Expression

Oct. 2, 2024 — A new study challenges the hypothesis that 'puppy dog eyes' evolved exclusively in dogs as a result of ...

World's Oldest Cheese Reveals Origins of Kefir

Sep. 25, 2024 — Scientists successfully extracted and analyzed DNA from ancient cheese samples found alongside the Tarim Basin mummies in China, dating back approximately 3,600 years. The research suggests a new ...

Early Dingoes Are Related to Dogs from New Guinea and East Asia

Sep. 18, 2024 — New archaeological research has discovered for the first time clear links between fossils of the iconic Australian dingo, and dogs from East Asia and New ...

The Neanderthals May Have Become Extinct Because of Their Isolated Lifestyle

Sep. 12, 2024 — Neanderthal remains recently discovered in a cave in France support well-known theory of why the Neanderthals became extinct, researchers behind a new study ...

Agriculture Accelerated Human Genome Evolution to Capture Energy from Starchy Foods

Sep. 4, 2024 — Scientists have suspected that modern humans have more genes to digest starch than our hunter-gatherer ancestors, but the amylase locus of the genome is hard to study. Researchers have now developed ...

New Population Model Identifies Phases of Human Dispersal Across Europe

Sep. 4, 2024 — Researchers have developed a model that captures the dynamics of human dispersal across the continent during the last Ice Age in unprecedented ...

Bonobos and Ancient Origin of the 'Common Enemy Effect'

Aug. 23, 2024 — A link between outgroup threats and ingroup cohesion has been considered since the time of Darwin to be an adaptation for group-based competition. During the years since, studies of all sorts -- from ...

Fossil Hotspots in Africa Obscure a More Complete Picture of Human Evolution

Aug. 20, 2024 — A new study shows how the mismatch between where fossils are preserved and where humans likely lived may influence our understanding of early human ...

Decoding the World's Largest Animal Genome

Aug. 14, 2024 — Scientists have sequenced the largest genome of all animals, the lungfish genome. Their data help to explain how the fish-ancestors of today's land vertebrates were able to conquer ...

Smallest Arm Bone in Human Fossil Record Sheds Light on the Dawn of Homo Floresiensis

Aug. 6, 2024 — A new study reports the discovery of extremely rare early human fossils from the Indonesian island of Flores, including an astonishingly small adult limb bone. Dated to about 700,000 years old, the ...

Genetic Signatures of Domestication Identified in Pigs, Chickens

Aug. 2, 2024 — Wild boars and red junglefowl gave rise to common pigs and chickens. These animals' genes evolved to express themselves differently, leading to signatures of domestication -- such as weaker ...

Half a Billion-Year-Old Spiny Slug Reveals the Origins of Mollusks

Aug. 2, 2024 — Exceptional fossils with preserved soft parts reveal that the earliest mollusks were flat, armored slugs without shells. The new species, Shishania aculeata, was covered with hollow, organic, ...

Ancient Microbes Offer Clues to How Complex Life Evolved

July 16, 2024 — Researchers have discovered that a single-celled organism, a close relative of animals, harbors the remnants of ancient giant viruses woven into its own genetic code. This finding sheds light on how ...

Insight Into One of Life's Earliest Ancestors Revealed in New Study

July 12, 2024 — Researchers have shed light on Earth's earliest ecosystem, showing that within a few hundred million years of planetary formation, life on Earth was already ...

'A History of Contact': Geneticists Are Rewriting the Narrative of Neanderthals and Other Ancient Humans

July 11, 2024 — Using genomes from 2,000 living humans as well as three Neanderthals and one Denisovan, an international team mapped the gene flow between the hominin groups over the past quarter-million ...

Ancient Dingo DNA Shows Modern Dingoes Share Little Ancestry With Modern Dog Breeds

July 8, 2024 — A study of ancient dingo DNA revealed that the distribution of modern dingoes across Australia, including those on K'gari (formerly Fraser Island), pre-dates European colonization and ...

Extinct Humans Survived on the Tibetan Plateau for 160,000 Years

July 3, 2024 — Bone remains found in a Tibetan cave 3,280 m above sea level indicate an ancient group of humans survived here for many ...

First Case of Down Syndrome in Neanderthals Documented in New Study

June 26, 2024 — A new study documents the first case of Down syndrome in Neanderthals and reveals that they were capable of providing altruistic care and support for a vulnerable member of their social ...

Origins of Cumulative Culture in Human Evolution

June 17, 2024 — Cumulative culture -- the accumulation of technological modifications and improvements over generations -- allowed humans to adapt to a diversity of environments and challenges. But, it is unclear ...

Early Homo Sapiens Facilitated the Establishment of the Bonelli's Eagle in the Mediterranean 50,000 Years Ago

June 14, 2024 — Scientists have unraveled the ancestral history of one of the most iconic birds of prey in the current Iberian fauna: the Bonelli's eagle (Aquila fasciata). The study combines evidence from ...

Bringing Back an Ancient Bird

May 28, 2024 — Using ancient DNA extracted from the toe bone of a museum specimen, biologists have sequenced the genome of an extinct, flightless bird called the little bush moa, shedding light into an unknown ...