Biological Anthropology

Neandertals hunted dangerous prey. How they killed them.

Neandertals were skilled hunters. Many archaeological sites show their ability to kill large mammals like bison, horse, and red deer.…

2 years ago

New evidence is revealing the ages of death, birth, and menarche in Neandertals

Analysis of dental cementum is yielding new insights into the ages when ancient people faced significant physiological stresses. Reconstruction of…

2 years ago

Chimpanzees have their own language — and scientists just learned how they put “words” together

The discovery of a chimp group's 390-word "language" has profound implications for the evolution of human speech Three chimpanzees sitting…

2 years ago

The Broken Stones of Monkeys Look Uncannily Like Something We Used to Make

A crab-eating macaque using a stone hammer to crack open a nut. (Lydia V. Luncz) We humans may no longer have tails,…

2 years ago

Healthy Mice Created From 2 Fathers in Radical Gene-Editing Breakthrough

Scientists claim they have created mice with two fathers in a breakthrough that could someday be replicated in humans. Katsuhiko…

2 years ago

Scientists Identify Chemical Reaction That May Have Triggered Life on Earth

There was a critical point early in Earth's history when chemical reactions among the mix of organic molecules began to…

2 years ago

Surprising similarities in stone tools of early humans and monkeys

Accidentally produced stone fragments made by macaques resemble some of the earliest hominin stone artifacts. Researchers from the Max Planck…

2 years ago

Oldest Stone Tools Ever Found Were Not Made by Human Hands, Study Suggests

Fossilized hippopotamid skeleton with Oldowan artifacts. (T.W. Plummer, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project) Archaeologists have revealed what could be the oldest stone…

2 years ago

Our Genomes Are Full of ‘Junk DNA’ That Could Be Way More Important Than We Realized

Of the roughly three billion base pairs making up the human genome, only around 2 percent encodes proteins, leaving the remaining 98…

2 years ago

500,000-Year-Old Signs of Extinct Human Species Found in Poland Cave

The entrance to Tunel Wielki cave. (Miron Bogacki/University of Warsaw) Prehistoric stone tools found in a cave in Poland 50 years…

2 years ago