Paleoanthropology News

Researchers Reconstruct Face of Oldest Known Homo sapiens

Facial approximation of the Jebel Irhoud hominin. Image credit: Moraes et al., doi: 10.3390/heritage9090369.
Sep 23, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Scientists have created a digital facial approximation of the Jebel Irhoud hominin, whose remains are dated to about 315,000 years ago. Facial approximation of the Jebel Irhoud hominin. Image credit: Moraes et al., doi: 10.3390/heritage9090369. In the early 1960s, a worker extracting minerals at Jebel Irhoud, in Morocco, uncovered a skull with strikingly human features. Named Irhoud 1, the fossil was initially identified as an African Neanderthal...

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A depiction of an early Homo (right) characterized by relatively greater bone strength of the femur in the thigh compared to the humerus in the arm, and a depiction of an older human ancestor, Australopithecus (left), characterized by more equivalent strength in the bones of the arm and thigh. Image credit: Cullen Townsend.

Fossil Evidence Suggests Early Homo Had Abandoned Tree-Climbing by 1.8 Million Years Ago

Sep 16, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

New research led by University of the Witwatersrand and University of Southern California paleoanthropologists sheds more light on one of the most debated...

An artist’s concept of a Penghu Denisovan walking under the bright Sun during the Pleistocene of Taiwan. Image credit: Cheng-Han Sun.

Denisovans Once Roamed Southwest China, New Fossils Reveal

Sep 10, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleoanthropologists have identified a trove of Denisovan fossils from a cave in China’s Yunnan province, extending the known range of the elusive human...

Drummond-Clarke et al. show that trees were an essential component of the hominin adaptive niche, with bipedalism evolving in an arboreal context, likely driven by foraging strategy. Illustration by Arturo Asensio, via Quo.es.

Our Ancient Ancestors May Have Climbed Trees with ‘Monkey’ Feet

Aug 25, 2026 by Sergio Prostak

An enduring debate in paleoanthropology asks what kind of foot the last common ancestor (LCA) of humans and chimpanzees had: one built like a modern ape’s...

Paranthropus boisei. Image credit: © Roman Yevseyev.

Anthropologist Proposes Folding Australopithecus and Paranthropus into Genus Homo

Aug 19, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Dr. Ian Towle, a researcher with the Biomedicine Discovery Institute at Monash University, proposes folding nearly 5 million years of hominin fossils into...

Reconstruction of a Neanderthal. Image credit: Neanderthal Museum.

Neanderthal Pelvis May Reveal Why Modern Men and Women Walk Differently

Aug 18, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

A Neanderthal pelvis — the basin-shaped ring of bones at the base of the spin — discovered decades ago may help explain an unusual feature...

An artist’s concept of a Penghu Denisovan walking under the bright Sun during the Pleistocene of Taiwan. Image credit: Cheng-Han Sun.

Denisovans Were Surprisingly Tall, New Fossils from Taiwan Suggest

Aug 17, 2026 by Sergio Prostak

Two fossilized leg bones of Denisovans — an extinct archaic Homo group whose lineage diverged from the Neanderthal lineage 550,000 years ago and...

An artist’s rendering of a Homo antecessor individual known as the Girl of Gran Dolina. Image credit: Tom Björklund.

Homo antecessor Had Surprisingly Modern Skull, New Fossils Suggest

Aug 10, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new analysis of three skull fragments unearthed at the Gran Dolina cave site in Spain indicates that Homo antecessor had bone thickness closer to that...

Velazquez-Arcelay et al. found that genetic material from Neanderthal ancestors may have contributed to the propensity of some people today to be early risers, the sort of people who are more comfortable getting up and going to bed earlier. Image credit: Holger Neumann / Neanderthal Museum.

Neanderthal Gene Still Shapes Muscle and Jaws in Some Living Humans

Aug 7, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Neanderthals vanished roughly 42,000 years ago, but a piece of their biology appears to be quietly at work in some people today, according to a new study...

Paranthropus boisei. Image credit: © Roman Yevseyev.

Study Points to Sugar, Not Just Meat, as Fuel for Human Brain Evolution

Aug 6, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

A team of researchers from the University of Sydney and the University of Glasgow argues that dietary sugars, not animal foods, may have played the decisive...

An archaic hominin. Image credit: Ninara / CC BY 2.0.

Scientists Find Traces of Two Unknown Archaic Hominins in Human DNA

Aug 2, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

New research led by the University of California, Berkeley reveals that beyond Neanderthals and Denisovans, humans interbred with two mysterious ‘ghost’...

A Homo heidelbergensis, a Neanderthal and a Cro-Magnon. Image credit: SINC / José Antonio Peñas.

224,000-Year-Old Homo Skull Fragment Adds New Mystery to Human Origins

Jul 30, 2026 by Sergio Prostak

A fossilized skull fragment of Homo sp. unearthed in central Spain offers paleoanthropologists a fresh window into the story of ancient humans who lived...

One of 1.43-million-year-old footprints found at the GaJi10 site in the Koobi Fora Formation in northern Kenya; a 15-cm (6-inch) ruler is shown for scale. Image credit: Kay Behrensmeyer.

Ancient Footprints in Kenya Hint at Bigger Bodies and Group Behavior among Early Human Relatives

Jul 28, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

A set of 1.43-million-year-old fossil footprints preserved along the margin of an ancient lake in northern Kenya is offering paleoanthropologists new evidence...

A group of Neanderthals in a cave. Image credit: Tyler B. Tretsven.

Ancient Turkish Cave Reveals Neanderthals and Homo sapiens Shared Same Way of Life

Jul 8, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Üçağızlı II Cave on Türkiye’s Mediterranean coast has yielded a rare and detailed record of two Homo species living the same way of life, one after...

Paleo-Indians hunting a glyptodont, a relative of the armadillo that lived during the Pleistocene epoch. By Heinrich Harder, 1920.

Ancient Americans Were Megafauna Hunters, Not Generalists, Study Shows

Jul 6, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

New research suggests that the first widespread human cultures in the Americas were not opportunistic foragers who ate whatever they could find, but specialized...

An artist’s reconstruction of Clovis life 13,000 years ago shows the Anzick-1 infant with his mother consuming mammoth meat near a hearth. Another individual crafts tools, including dart projectile points and atlatls. A mammoth butchery area is visible nearby. Image credit: Eric Carlson / Ben Potter / Jim Chatters.

Did Clovis People Hunt Mammoths or Simply Scavenge Their Carcasses?

Jul 6, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

For decades, the discovery of stone spear points lying next to proboscidean (mammoth, mastodon, and gomphothere) bones has been treated as archaeology’s...

Reconstruction of Homo floresiensis. Image credit: Kinez Riza / Atelier Elisabeth Daynes, Sangiran Museum.

Homo floresiensis Probably Didn’t Hunt Stegodons or Use Fire

Jul 5, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

When paleoanthropologists announced the discovery of Homo floresiensis on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, the tiny, small-brained species quickly...

Representative rock art figures from each of the 11 archaeological sites analyzed by Bossoms Mesa et al. Image credit: Bossoms Mesa et al., 10.1038/s41467-026-74234-2.

Scientists Recover Ancient Human DNA from Cave Walls

Jul 2, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

For the first time, researchers have extracted ancient human DNA directly from the walls of a cave. Although their results do not conclusively link ancient...

Variation in laughter tempo across five great ape species (orangutans, gorillas, bonobos, chimpanzees, and humans): each dot represents an individual observation; color indicates phylogenetic distance (in million years ago); each square contains an image of the corresponding species, with a matching dot color for intuitive reference. Image credit: De Gregorio et al., 10.1038/s42003-026-10499-z.

New Research Traces Origins of Human Laughter

Jun 28, 2026 by Natali Anderson

The way humans laugh — in rapid, rhythmically timed bursts — is not uniquely ours. New research by the University of Warwick and the University...

Reconstruction of a Neanderthal. Image credit: Neanderthal Museum.

Ancient DNA Sheds Light on Final Chapter of Neanderthal Life in Northwestern Europe

Jun 25, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Scientists have generated genetic data from 27 Neanderthals who lived in Belgium and France less than approximately 52,500 years ago, painting a richer...

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