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New Findings
The New York Times, Fossil Foot Indicates New Prehuman SpeciesMarch 28, 2012. A 3.4-million-year-old fossil foot found in Ethiopia appears to settle the long-disputed question of whether there was only a single line of hominins — species more closely related to humans than to chimpanzees — between four million and three million years ago. The fossil record for that period had been virtually limited to the species Australopithecus afarensis, made famous by the 3.2-million-year-old Lucy skeleton.
The Independent, New evidence suggests Stone Age hunters from Europe discovered America
February 28, 2012. A remarkable series of several dozen European-style stone tools, dating back between 19,000 and 26,000 years, have been discovered at six locations along the US east coast.
Science, Ancient Tools Point to Early Human Migration Into ArabiaNovember 30, 2011. More than 100,000 years ago, a group of early humans stood on the western shore of the Red Sea, gazing across the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait at the Arabian Peninsula. The land was lush and verdant, beckoning them to cross. But did they? A new analysis of stone tools discovered in Oman suggests that they did, indicating that humans may have ventured into Arabia tens of thousands of years earlier than many scientists believed.
The New York Times, In African Cave, Signs of an Ancient Paint FactoryOctober 13, 2011. Digging deeper in a South African cave that had already yielded surprises from the Middle Stone Age, archaeologists have uncovered a 100,000-year-old workshop holding the tools and ingredients with which early modern humans apparently mixed some of the first known paint.
PBS, Clever Monkeys
Premiered November 9, 2008. Just how smart are monkeys? Their innate curiosity leads them to try new things, but it's their culture — the passing of information from one generation to the next — that teaches them much of what they know.
NATURE travels around the world to visit some of these fascinating primates. From tiny pygmy marmoset in South America to aggressive baboons of Africa and compassionate toque macaques in Sri Lanka, Clever Monkeys challenges many ideas about what is purely “human.”
The New York Times, New Fossils May Redraw Human AncestryNATURE travels around the world to visit some of these fascinating primates. From tiny pygmy marmoset in South America to aggressive baboons of Africa and compassionate toque macaques in Sri Lanka, Clever Monkeys challenges many ideas about what is purely “human.”
September 8, 2011. An apelike creature with human features, whose fossil bones were discovered recently in a South African cave, is being greeted by paleoanthropologists as a likely watershed in the understanding of human evolution.
The New York Times, Earliest Signs of Advanced Tools FoundAugust 31, 2011. A new geological study, being reported Thursday in the journal Nature, showed that tools from a site near Lake Turkana in Kenya were made about 1.76 million years ago, the earliest of their ilk found so far.
San Francisco Chronicle, Neanderthal genome inherited by humans, study saysAugust 26, 2011. Long ago, in a part of the world now known as Europe, early modern humans lived alongside the Neanderthal people – and they interbred.
New Scientist, Did modern humans go global twice as early as thought?January 27, 2010. Homo sapiens might have spread across the world much earlier than previously thought – and it was a favourable climate, not a sophisticated culture, that allowed them to go.
The New York Times, Siberian Fossils Were Neanderthals’ Eastern Cousins, DNA Reveals
December 22, 2010. An international team of scientists has identified a previously shadowy human group known as the Denisovans as cousins to Neanderthals who lived in Asia from roughly 400,000 to 50,000 years ago and interbred with the ancestors of today's inhabitants of New Guinea.
New Scientist, Hunter-gatherers cared for first known ancient invalidOctober 11, 2010. An individual of the species Homo heidelbergensis, who lived about 500,000 years ago, is the most elderly ancient human ever found. This hunter-gatherer was so infirm that it was very likely that he was looked after by his contemporaries.
The New York Times, Clues of Britain's First HumansJuly 7, 2010. The discovery of 78 flint tools, more than 800,000 years old, shows that early humans, thought to survive only in warm, Mediterranean-style climates, could penetrate much colder regions and survive with a kit of crude tools.
New Scientist, Neanderthals not the only apes humans bred withMay 12, 2010. A long-awaited rough draft of the Neanderthal genome has revealed that our own DNA contains clear evidence that early humans interbred with Neanderthals.
New Scientist, Almost human: closest australopithecine primate foundApril 12, 2010. Another long-lost human cousin, Australopithecus sediba, has been unearthed in South Africa. Of all the australopithecine primates yet found, its anatomy is the closest to the true humans that evolved into us.
The New York Times, New Hominid Species Discovered in South Africa
April 8, 2010. Fossils from the boy and a woman qualify as a new species of hominid, named Australopithecus sediba.
The species sediba strode upright on long legs, with human-shaped hips and pelvis, but still climbed through trees on apelike arms.
The New York Times, On Crete, New Evidence of Very Ancient MarinersFebruary 15, 2010. Early humans, possibly even prehuman ancestors, appear to have been going to sea much longer than anyone had ever suspected.