Latest Human evolution Stories

UCLA life scientists and colleagues have produced one of the first high-resolution genetic maps for African American populations. A genetic map reveals the precise locations across the genome where DNA from a person's father and mother have been stitched together through a biological process called "recombination." This process results in new genetic combinations that are then passed on to the person's children.The new map will help disease geneticists working to map genetic...

Scientists at the University of Liverpool discovered ancient footprints that show human-like features of the feet and gait existed two million years earlier than previously thought. Earlier studies suggested that the characteristics of the human foot, such as the ability to walk upright, emerged in early Homo, which was about 1.9 million years ago. However, the Liverpool researchers have shown that footprints of a human ancestor dating back 3.7 million years ago show features of the foot with...

Some of the human X chromosome originates from Neanderthals and is found exclusively in people outside Africa, according to an international team of researchers led by Damian Labuda of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Montreal and the CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center. The research was published in the July issue of Molecular Biology and Evolution."This confirms recent findings suggesting that the two populations interbred," says Dr. Labuda. His team places the...

Modern humans never co-existed with Homo erectus"”a finding counter to previous hypotheses of human evolution"”new excavations in Indonesia and dating analyses show. The research, reported in the journal PLoS One, offers new insights into the nature of human evolution, suggesting a different role for Homo erectus than had been previously thought.The work was conducted by the Solo River Terrace (SoRT) Project, an international group of scientists directed by anthropologists Etty Indriati...

An analysis of two ancient hominid species that roamed southern Africa more than a million years ago suggests that females left their childhood homes while males stayed at home, an international team of researchers said on Wednesday.The scientists studied teeth from a group of extinct Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus individuals from two adjacent cave systems, and found that more than half of the female teeth were from outside the local area.By comparison, just 10 percent...

Researchers have new evidence that suggest Neanderthals died out much earlier than previously thought, and possibly before modern humans arrived. Carbon-dated Neanderthal remains from a cave in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains in Russia were found to be 10,000 years older than previous research had suggested. The new evidence contradicts the popular theory that Neanderthals and modern humans interacted for thousands of years before the archaic species became extinct. Instead, the...

New research finds that the ancient pre-human known as "Nutcracker Man" did not dine on nuts after all, but instead dined on large quantities of grasses and sedges -- a discovery that upsets conventional wisdom about the diet of early humans."It most likely was eating grass, and most definitely was not cracking nuts," said University of Utah geochemist Thure Cerling, lead author of the study.The "Nutcracker Man", or Paranthropus boisei, is an ancient human relative that...

What was really on the menus of our ancestors?For human ancestors, eating could be hard work."Our ancestors were large creatures. With very low quality foods, without cooked foods, it's very likely that they would have spent a great deal more of their day eating than we do," says Peter Ungar, distinguished professor and chairman of anthropology at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.Ungar's work, understanding ancient diets, is a combination of anthropology, biology,...

Experiment stresses consequences of placing newly discovered fossils on human family treeSomeday a future intelligent organism could sweep away a million years of dust and find the bones of a Homo sapiens and wonder what he was.Further research would show Homo sapiens walked upright, lived in communities and buried their dead. But this future intelligent organism might be faced with an old puzzle--determining where Homo sapiens came from."If their cognitive world induced them to ask the...

A new study shows clear evidence that our ancient human ancestors in Europe learned to control fire -- one of the most important milestones on the path to civilization -- some 400,000 years ago.The findings are another indication that Neanderthals weren't simply dimwitted brutes, as often portrayed, and were in fact able to thrive in Europe's northern latitudes without the use of fire.  The researchers suggested that a highly active lifestyle, along with a diet high in protein, might have...