Latest anthropology professor Stories

Sharing food has widely been considered by scholars as a defining characteristic of human behavior. But a new study by Iowa State University anthropology professor Jill Pruetz now reports that chimpanzees from her Fongoli research site in Senegal also frequently share food and hunting tools with other chimps. Co-authored by ISU anthropology graduate student Stacy Lindshield, their study is posted online in Primates and will be published in a future issue of the journal. The researchers...

Among the many surprises associated with the discovery of the oldest known, nearly complete skeleton of a hominid is the finding that this species took its first steps toward bipedalism not on the open, grassy savanna, as generations of scientists "“ going back to Charles Darwin "“ hypothesized, but in a wooded landscape."This species was not a savanna species like Darwin proposed," said University of Illinois anthropology professor Stanley Ambrose, a co-author of two of 11 studies...