Blog articles
Gathering the Ancestors
The largest exhibition of hominin fossils in history brought together science, the public, and geopolitics at the height of the Cold War.
Pounding starches on Jordan's ancient banks
New research highlights starch grains from many kinds of plants that were processed by pounding tools at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov.
Ancient travois use by some of the earliest Americans
At White Sands National Park 22,000 years ago, impressive footprint evidence is now joined by a technology for transit.
Seeing Neandertal teeth as art
The photography of Luka Mjeda brought a new way of looking at the teeth of the Krapina people.
Another look at selection and the Black Death
An exchange of comments probes the story of the EPAS2 gene, balancing selection, and resistance to Yersinia pestis.
Research highlight: Brain of the Taung Child
A new study of the endocast discovered a hundred years ago asks, what if we found this fossil today?
Research highlight: Understanding how Homo naledi walked and ran
A new paper in the Journal of Anatomy presents a reconstructed lower limb based on the Rising Star fossil sample.
The circumstances of the Taung discovery
The textbook story of the fossil leaves out a wider context in which scientists interpreted the first evidence of Australopithecus.
A hard ceiling on modern human dispersal
Neandertal DNA in some of the oldest modern human genomes establishes a short timeline of 50,000 years for the out-of-Africa founder event.
A look at the Maba hominin skull
Found in 1958, the skull is one of a handful of fossil hominins from southern China that may be connected with the Denisovans.
The contribution of segmental duplications to human diversity
New studies based on long-read sequencing open a new way of looking at variation of these structural variants.
A look at the fossil skull from Steinheim
The skull provides some of the best evidence for the ancestral population of Neandertals, and had a tumultuous history in the decades after its discovery.
Top 10 discoveries about ancient people from DNA in 2024
New resolution is emerging of some events in ancient human populations, and a clearer view of some parts of the genome.
A sad end for the Journal of Human Evolution
A joint statement announces the resignation of the entire editorial board, while disclosing for the first time the use of AI in article production.
Did scientists miss a fake Neandertal for 25 years?
An investigation claims dozens of cases of misdated bones in Rheinland-Pfalz, including the purported Ochtendung Neandertal.
When hominins walked in each others' tracks
A new study by Kevin Hatala and coworkers finds that Homo erectus and Paranthropus boisei walked on the same shores within hours of each other.
“Lucy”, superstar of evolution, at fifty
Today's science has broadened enormously since the 1970s but the iconic fossil still has an important place in understanding our ancient past.
A look at the Neanderthal from Altamura
The exceptional skeleton encased in calcite has started to yield insights about early Neanderthals.
Late Neandertals: more diverse than most scientists thought
The new “Thorin” genome from Grotte Mandrin represents a previously-unknown Neanderthal deep history.
What do we know about the ancestry of Homo erectus?
A creation interest group takes a quote from me, and I look back at a classic paper.
Julurens: a new cousin for Denisovans and Neanderthals
A new study suggests that the Middle Pleistocene record in China includes more groups than have previously been recognized.
The evolutionary mystery of the German cockroach
The species evolved to exploit human-built environments and exists nowhere else. So where did it come from?
New insights into the biology of Homo luzonensis
Studies of teeth from Callao Cave yield information about the pace of development in this species and its possible connections with Homo erectus.
Why did the ancients make gigantic handaxes?
Looking at new research on the distribution and function of curiously large bifacial tools
Four amazing Stone Age sites with wooden artifacts
From Africa, Asia, and Europe, these sites give us a rare window into the ways that organic technology shaped ancestral lives.
How many bathrooms have Neanderthals in the tile?
A Reddit poster finds an ancient jaw in his parents' new travertine. It may be more common than most people imagine.
Eclipses for the ancestors
Culture shapes our experience of these astronomical events, and would have done so for Neanderthals and other ancestral hominins.
A remembrance of Frans de Waal
Among many highlights of this primatologist's work, he maintained that humans are not unique or separated from other primates.
Vagrant birds and ancient human habitats
People killed the Carolina parakeet. An inquiry into their historic population range helps illustrate the challenges of understanding ancient human populations.
Guide to Paranthropus species
Long known as a group of human relatives with big teeth and jaws, these ancient species lived for at least two million years alongside our ancestors.
