Paleoanthropology News

Aug 15, 2023 by News Staff

Looking at habitat overlap for Neanderthals and Denisovans, Pusan National University researcher Jiaoyang Ruan and colleagues found patterns of interbreeding between these two hominins that correlate with climate and environmental change in Eurasia. Ruan et al. demonstrate how glacial cycle variability synchronized hominin habitat overlap, Denisovan-Neanderthal interbreeding, and early human gene flow. Image credit: Axel Timmermann. “Contemporary...

Aug 10, 2023 by News Staff

New paleoclimate evidence shows that around 1.1 million years ago, the southern European climate cooled significantly and caused an extinction of archaic...

Jul 20, 2023 by News Staff

An analysis of a 300,000-year-old double-pointed wooden stick from the Middle Pleistocene site of Schöningen, Germany, shows it was scraped, seasoned...

Jun 29, 2023 by News Staff

The sexual division of labor among human foraging populations has typically been recognized as involving males as hunters and females as gatherers. Recent...

Jun 27, 2023 by News Staff

Paleoanthropologists have found multiple cut marks on a 1.45-million-year-old (Early Pleistocene) hominin fossil found in the Koobi Fora Formation in the...

Jun 21, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

Non-figurative markings on the walls of La Roche-Cotard cave in France are the oldest known engravings made by our sister species. The 57,000-year-old...

Jun 14, 2023 by News Staff

Soft tissues rarely preserve in the fossil record, rather scientists are mostly left with just the skeletal material. Yet, muscles animate the body. They...

Jun 14, 2023 by News Staff

Also known as Dupuytren’s disease, ‘Viking disease’ hand disorder — a condition in which one or more fingers become permanently bent in a flexed...

May 26, 2023 by Sergio Prostak

The 153,000-year-old footprint, which was found in the Garden Route National Park, a national park in the Garden Route region of the South African Western...

May 24, 2023 by News Staff

The dispersal of anatomically modern Homo sapiens out of Africa and across Eurasia provides a unique opportunity to examine the impacts of genetic selection...

May 11, 2023 by News Staff

Early humans and their hominin relatives had to adapt to new environments to spread out of Africa. In a new study, paleoanthropologists from the Institute...

May 10, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

In new research, scientists examined chemical properties locked inside tooth enamel of two Middle Paleolithic Neanderthals and a Magdalenian human from...

May 8, 2023 by News Staff

ATF3, a gene that leads to a taller nose (from top to bottom), may have been the product of natural selection as ancient humans adapted to colder climates...

May 4, 2023 by News Staff

Application of a novel non-destructive DNA extraction method to a Paleolithic deer tooth pendant from Denisova Cave, Siberia, resulted in the recovery...

Mar 2, 2023 by News Staff

Modern humans have populated Europe for more than 45,000 years. However, our knowledge of the genetic relatedness and structure of ancient hunter-gatherers...

Feb 22, 2023 by News Staff

Different genetic traits can be beneficial (for example, fending off disease) or harmful (making humans more susceptible to illness), depending on the...

Feb 10, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

Oldowan tools, consisting of stones with one to a few flakes removed, are the oldest widespread and temporally persistent hominin tools. The oldest of...

Feb 2, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

Straight-tusked elephants (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) were the largest terrestrial mammals of the Pleistocene epoch, present in Europe and western Asia between...

Jan 24, 2023 by The Conversation

Neanderthal art was perhaps more abstract than the stereotypical figure and animal cave paintings Homo sapiens made after Neanderthals disappeared about...

Jan 6, 2023 by News Staff

In at least 400 European caves such as Lascaux, Chauvet and Altamira, Upper Paleolithic humans drew, painted and engraved non-figurative signs from at...