Wild monkeys challenge a long-held assumption about the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees
Wild sooty mangabey monkeys can bend the middle of their feet almost as much as chimpanzees flex their…
A Quantum Microscope Can Show Us How Neanderthals Tended Their Fires
Artistic illustration. Image credits: ZME Science. The last flames kindled by Neanderthals died tens of thousands of years…
The most controversial fossil site in human evolution just got even more puzzling | News
(CNN) — Humanlike fossils have emerged from the deep and twisting caverns of the Rising Star cave system…
Largest Denisovan DNA study reveals ancient genes still active in Oceanian populations
Ancient DNA inherited from Denisovans, an extinct group of human relatives, still influences the biology of people living…
100,000-year-old Homo sapiens bones from Ethiopia may preserve earliest evidence of human cremation
Researchers studying Ethiopia’s Afar Rift have reported what could be the oldest known evidence of human cremation. The…
China scientists argue that harsh settings, not warm climates, drive early human creativity
Archaeologists in central China have directly challenged the long-held belief that humanity’s earliest ancestors reached their creative peak…
Humans are the only primates with a lopsided hand preference
Of all the monkeys and apes scientists have studied, no species shows a population-level hand preference. Individual primates…
Scientists May Have Finally Figured Out Why Most People Are Right-Handed
Around 90% of people—across cultures and throughout recorded history—are right-handed. That fact may seem ordinary, yet it remains…
Research shows Neanderthals gathered shellfish like modern humans | Northwest & National News
Specimen of the gastropod Phorcus lineatus. (ICTA-UAB via SWNS) By Talker By Stephen Beech Cavemen gathered shellfish to…
Human Brains May Have Started Shrinking Thousands of Years Ago. Scientists Still Can’t Agree Why
For most of human evolution, the story of the brain seemed to move in one direction: up. Over…
Ancient teeth unlock million-year-old secrets of where early humans evolved
Teeth are like tiny biological time capsules. They tell stories about ancient diets and environments long after their owners…
My sleepless night in a chimpanzee nest
(Meet Tatu and Loulis—the last of the ‘talking’ chimpanzees) The anthropologist David Samson has dedicated much of his…