Recently published paper indicates discovery could yield important clues on origins of humankind

Species identified in 2010 is 1 of closest relatives to humans A dental study of fossilized remains found in South Africa in 2008 provides new support that this species is one of the closest relatives to early humans.

Researchers at Wits University in South Africa, including Peter Schmid from the University of Zurich, have described the anatomy of a single early hominin in six new studies.

A team of scientists has pieced together how the hominid Australopithecus sediba (Au. sediba) walked, chewed, and moved nearly two million years ago.

Buried for 100,000 years at Xujiayao in the Nihewan Basin of northern China, the recovered skull pieces of an early human exhibit a now-rare congenital deformation that indicates inbreeding might well have been common among our ancestors, new research from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Washington University in St. Louis suggests.

Although a relatively large number of late Middle Pleistocene hominins have been found in East Asia, these fossils have not been consistently included in current debates about the origin of anatomically modern humans (AMHS), and little is known about their phylogenetic place in relation to contemporary hominins from Africa and Europe as well as to Upper Pleistocene hominins.

When, how and why modern humans first stood up and walked on two legs is considered to be one of the greatest missing links in our evolutionary history. Scientists have gone to the far ends of the earth – and the wonderful creatures in it – to look for answers to why we walk the way we walk.

Neanderthal brains were adapted to allow them to see better and maintain larger bodies, according to new research published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B today.

A newly discovered Y chromosome places the most recent common ancestor for the Y chromosome lineage more 100,000 years before the oldest known anatomically modern human fossils

Cueva de Nerja : Wiki Commons Researchers of the University of Valencia have dated between 14.500 and 13.500 years ago

Image : John Stewart conducting his research into prehistoric environments Tracing the effects of climate change on prehistoric and future

For decades, archaeologists have debated how farming spread to Stone Age Europe, setting the stage for the rise of Western civilization.

The theory that the last Neanderthals –Homo neanderthalensis– persisted in southern Iberia at the same time that modern humans –Homo sapiens– advanced in the northern part of the peninsula, has been widely accepted by the scientific community during the last twenty years.

Comet explosions did not end the prehistoric human culture, known as Clovis, in North America 13,000 years ago, according to research published in the journal Geophysical Monograph Series.

Australopithecine ancestors — arboreal versus terrestrial habitat and locomotion

UAlberta archeologist’s new research may lead to rethinking how and when our ancestors left Africa to colonize the globe

Recent genetic studies suggest that Neanderthals may have bred with anatomically modern humans tens of thousands of years ago in the Middle East, contributing to the modern human gene pool. But the findings are not universally accepted, and the fossil record has not helped to clarify the role of interbreeding, which is also known as hybridization.