The ancestors of modern-day people living on Southeast Asian islands likely interbred with a prehistoric species called Denisovans - raising the possibility of fresh and intriguing fossil discoveries.
A reconstruction of the Priscomyzon family.
Kristen Tietjen
Since the 19th century, biologists have treated the larvae of lampreys as a relic of evolutionary ancestry that could potentially give clues about vertebrate origins. Now fossils overturn that view.
Early humans called Denisovans lived in a remote mountain cave between 100,000 and 60,000 years ago, and possibly longer still, raising intriguing questions about their relationship to modern humans.
Drilling 139 meters down to volcanic rock provided scientists with a million-year environmental record.
Human Origins Program, Smithsonian
A new environmental record for a prehistoric site in Kenya helped researchers figure out how external conditions influenced which of our ancient ancestors lived there, with what way of life.
The oldest known skeleton of our species Homo sapiens is about 300,000 years old. But there was a time when humans didn’t exist at all and the world was covered in nothing but slime.
Evolution seems to lead to increasing complexity of species. But perhaps a dominant, intelligent species like humans will always end up destroying itself.
More room should be made for archaeologists who do things differently.
Robyn Walker/HERI
The footprints of over 20 different prehistoric people, pressed into volcanic ash thousands of years ago in Tanzania, show possible evidence for sexual division of labor in this ancient community.
Humans evolved to communicate through eye contact.
JGI/Jamie Grill via Getty Images
People have changed over time, growing ever more distant and isolated from others – while at the same time finding new ways and technologies that let individuals connect and feel with others.
The arrangement of bones in our specimen’s fins are the same as those of ‘fingers’ in tetrapods. The only difference is the digits are locked within the fin, and not free moving.
Little Foot’s skull, with the arrow on the right-hand image indicating the specimen’s atlas.
R.J. Clarke/Author supplied
The findings suggest that this specimen could climb and move in trees. But it may also have been able to walk on the ground. This echoes previous studies.
An archaeological site in India sheds new light on how ancient humans dispersed from Africa across the world.
Neanderthal hunting grounds in southern Siberia — the Charysh River valley, with Chagyrskaya Cave in the centre of the photo.
Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Neanderthals living in a cave in southern Siberia made distinctive stone tools that can be traced to their ancestral homeland in eastern Europe — an intercontinental journey of more than 3,000 km.