Archaeologists found thousands of objects in a remote Australian cave which shows Aborigines made it inland some 10,000 years earlier than first thought. So what did they find?
Watercolour painting of a Haida painted wooden mask.
Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford 2014.89.1a
With the refugee crisis, Brexit, and the rise of populist extremism, we must defend the teaching of anthropology. And in doing so, we might expand and rethink ideas of “the humanities”.
Roman coins were discovered in Katsuren castle in Uruma, Okinawa, southwestern Japan.
EPA/Uruma City Education Board
Is this evidence that Rome traded with Japan? Almost certainly not.
Image (left) of the Mata Menge lower jaw fragment (SOA-MM4) superimposed on the Homo floresiensis skull (LB1) from Liang Bua, and compared with a modern human skull from the Jomon Period of Japan.
Y. Kaifu
New fossil finds show the first large-bodied inhabitants of an isolated Indonesian island evolved to Hobbit-size, but they always remembered how to make and use stone tools.
The remains of the Aboriginal man who lived more than 40,000 years ago are on the move again. But they’re still not returning home, to the place where they were discovered four decades ago.
A great white shark captured off the coast of Mexico.
Flickr/Brook Ward
We used to think of sharks as primitive fish because the had cartilage instead of bones. Turns out there was a good reason why and it makes them anything but primitive.
The site of the Apex chert once thought to hold the oldest fossil found on Earth.
Martin Brasier
Studying beads, shells and animal teeth – ornaments which carried deep cultural meaning to prehistoric man – reveals that northern Europeans resisted the spread of agriculture for centuries.
The Forum of Pompeii recreated in Lego.
Craig Barker/Nicholson Museum
Lego Pompeii was painstakingly recreated from more than 190,000 individual blocks across 470 hours for Sydney University’s Nicholson Museum – it’s the largest model of the ancient city ever constructed…
An artist’s reconstruction of Metaspriggina walcotti, the world’s oldest definite fish.
Artwork by Marianne Collins
It looked more like the worm on an angler’s hook than any living fish we might recognise today but it still takes the record for the oldest known fish to date. The first fossil fishes are known from scant…
A bull male Eastmanosteus placoderm. Placoderms were the first creatures to evolve paired reproductive organs with a bony skeleton called claspers.
Brian Choo & John Long, Flinders University.
We humans use the euphemism for sex that “we like to get a leg over” but the first jawed vertebrates – the placoderms – they liked to get a leg in. They were the first back-boned creatures to evolve male…
Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area in NSW – rich in ancient history.
Steve Bourne
Evidence of the first people to settle in Australia can be found in the Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area, in western New South Wales, informally referred to as Australia’s Rift Valley. Hundreds of archaeological…
I’ve put on a bit of weight in the last 4 million years, obviously.
Mr Mo-Fo
The fossil record of early humans is punctuated by gaps, voids in our understanding of all the transitions from the common ancestor of humans and other apes to modern day Homo sapiens. While working in…
Damien Hirst has always made ripples with his work, but now he’s in too deep.
PA
Is it right to use the severed head of a newly dead man as a humourous prop for a photograph? And if such a snap exists is it right to display it in art galleries? A photograph of artist Damien Hirst at…
Dinosaur remains have been found on all continents, including Australia.
Peter Trusler
Dinosaur remains have been found on every continent on Earth and we know these creatures dominated the planet’s ecosystems for around 140 million years. But despite their abundance elsewhere, few discoveries…
The fish-eating dinosaur discovered in Victoria is a member of Spinosauridae, a group of fish-eating theropod dinosaurs found in Asia and Europe.
Flickr
Paleontologists think it had the snout of a crocodile, the claws of a bear and a taste for seafood. But what’s most interesting about the discovery of Australia’s first fish-eating dinosaur is its similarities…
Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and Models Theme Leader for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders University