Paleoanthropology News

Stone Age Humans Conducted Surgical Amputation 31,000 Years Ago

Surgically amputated site of the left tibia and fibula of the Liang Tebo individual: (a) left and right legs with pelvic girdle, demonstrating the complete absence of the distal third of the left lower leg; (b) left tibia and fibula showing the amputation surface, atrophy and necrosis; the bone surface is more porous because lysis occurred to remove the dead bone (necrosis); (c) radiograph of the left tibia and fibula; (d) left tibia medial aspect; (e) left tibia medial aspect; (f) left fibula anterior aspect. Scale bars - 5 cm in (a), 5 mm in (b and c) and 2 mm in (d-f). Image credit: Maloney et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-05160-8.
Sep 12, 2022 by News Staff

Archaeologists excavating Liang Tebo Cave on the Indonesian island of Borneo have discovered the skeletal remains of a young individual who had the distal third of their left lower leg surgically amputated, probably as a child, at least 31,000 years ago; the individual survived the procedure and lived for another 6-9 years, before their remains were intentionally buried in the cave. The discovery pre-dates the previous oldest known evidence for...

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Reconstruction of a Neanderthal. Image credit: Neanderthal Museum.

Neocortical Neurogenesis in Modern Humans Greater Than It Was in Neanderthals

Sep 9, 2022 by News Staff

Neanderthal brains were similar in size to those of modern humans but differed in shape. What scientists cannot tell from fossils is how Neanderthal brains...

Representation of the modes of locomotion practiced by Sahelanthropus tchadensis. Image credit: Sabine Riffaut, Guillaume Daver, Franck Guy / PALEVOPRIM / CNRS / University of Poitiers.

Hominins Were Already Bipedal 7 Million Years Ago, Researchers Say

Aug 25, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleoanthropologists have examined three fossilized limb bones of Sahelanthropus tchadensis, one of the oldest known species in the human family tree. Representation...

Denisovans were probably dark-skinned, unlike the pale Neandertals. The picture shows a Neanderthal man. Image credit: Mauro Cutrona.

Study: Much of Neanderthal-Modern Human Interbreeding Took Place in Near East

Aug 24, 2022 by News Staff

Studies of human fossils, and the DNA extracted from them, reveal a complex history of interbreeding between various human lineages over the past 100,000...

Top: map of South Africa with the location of Ga-Mohana Hill (GHN); inset map shows the approximate extent of the Kalahari Basin in southern Africa and the location of the region of interest in relation to it. Bottom: representative photographs of each of the tufa morphologies identified on the Ga-Mohana hillside. Image credit: von der Meden et al., doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0270104.

Ancient Humans Lived in Kalahari Desert More Than 20,000 Years Ago

Aug 18, 2022 by News Staff

Detailed, well-dated palaeoclimate and archaeological records are critical for understanding the impact of environmental change on human evolution. In...

Dr. Daron Duke speaks with visitors to an archaeological site on the Utah Test and Training Range, July 18, 2022. Image credit: R. Nial Bradshaw, U.S. Air Force.

12,000-Year-Old Human Footprints Discovered in Utah

Aug 9, 2022 by News Staff

A team of researchers has discovered 88 fossilized human footprints in Utah’s West Desert, the United States. Dr. Daron Duke speaks with visitors to...

This mix of ribs, broken cranial bones, a molar, bone fragments, and stone cobbles is a refuse pile from the butchered mammoths; it was preserved beneath the adult mammoth’s skull and tusks at the site of Hartley in New Mexico, the United States. Image credit: Timothy Rowe / University of Texas at Austin.

Humans Lived in New Mexico 37,000 Years Ago, New Study Claims

Aug 2, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

Archaeologists have found butchered bones from a mother mammoth and her calf and signs of controlled fire at the Hartley locality, an open-air site on...

Scientists Sequence Genome of Red Deer Cave Human

Jul 14, 2022 by News Staff

Researchers have sequenced and analyzed the genome of a Late Pleistocene hominin from Red Deer Cave located in Southwest China, which was previously reported...

A group of Australopithecus afarensis. Image credit: Matheus Vieeira.

Australopithecus Fossils from Sterkfontein Caves are Much Older Than Previously Thought

Jun 28, 2022 by News Staff

The chronology and taxonomy of the ancient hominin genus Australopithecus in South Africa have long been controversial, with the Sterkfontein cave system...

An artist’s reconstruction of Homo heidelbergensis making a flint handaxe. Image credit: Gabriel Ugueto.

Early Humans were Present in Southeast Britain 620,000 Years Ago

Jun 23, 2022 by News Staff

The archaeological site of Fordwich in northeast Kent, England, reveals the presence of Acheulean hominins — possibly Homo erectus or Homo heidelbergensis...

Excavation area in Cueva de Ardales with evidence from the Middle Paleolithic period. Image credit: Ramos-Muñoz et al. / CC-BY 4.0.

Study: Spain’s Cueva de Ardales Was Used by Ancient Humans for Over 50,000 years

Jun 1, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

Cueva de Ardales is a hugely important Paleolithic site in Malaga, Spain, owing to its rich inventory of rock art. According to new research, Neanderthals...

A portrait of a juvenile female Denisovan based on a skeletal profile reconstructed from ancient DNA methylation maps. Image credit: Maayan Harel.

New Fossil Discovery Suggests Denisovans Lived in Laos 164,000-131,000 Years Ago

May 17, 2022 by News Staff

Paleoanthropologists have found a permanent lower molar of a young, likely female, hominin individual at the Tam Ngu Hao 2 limestone cave in the Annamite...

This is an artist’s impression of Çatalhöyük. Image credit: Dan Lewandowski.

Scientists Have New Theory on Origin of State

Apr 11, 2022 by News Staff

The conventional theory about the origin of the state is that the adoption of farming increased land productivity, which led to the production of food...

View of Grotte Mandrin, France. Image credit: Ludovic Slimak.

54,000-Year-Old Molar is Earliest Known Evidence of Anatomically Modern Humans in Western Europe

Feb 11, 2022 by News Staff

In a new paper published this week in the journal Science Advances, paleoanthropologists report hominin fossils from Grotte Mandrin in France that reveal...

A view of the Omo-Kibish geological formation in southwestern Ethiopia. Credit: Céline Vidal.

Africa’s Oldest Known Modern Human Fossils are 233,000 Years Old, Research Suggests

Jan 19, 2022 by News Staff

In the 1960s, paleoanthropologists uncovered the remains of anatomically modern Homo sapiens — known as Omo I — in the lower Omo valley of...

El Sidron Neanderthals taste wild mushrooms, pine nuts and forest moss. Image credit: Abel Grau, CSIC Communication.

Study: Neanderthals Transformed Landscapes 125,000 Years Ago

Dec 21, 2021 by News Staff

According to an analysis of paleoenvironmental and archaeological data from the 125,000-year-old Neanderthal site of Neumark-Nord in Germany, our closest...

Laetoli location and site rediscovery: (a) a model of Laetoli site A generated using photogrammetry showing the five hominin footprints; (b) corresponding contour map of the site generated from a 3D surface scan with scale bar; (c) map of Laetoli localities 7 and 8, indicating the positions of bipedal trackways A, G and S; (d, e) topographical maps of the two best preserved A footprints, A2 (d) and A3 (e). Image credit: McNutt et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-021-04187-7.

Study: At Least Two Hominin Species with Different Feet and Gaits Coexisted at Laetoli, Tanzania

Dec 2, 2021 by News Staff

Bipedal trackways discovered in 1978 at Laetoli site G, Tanzania, and dated to 3.66 million years ago are widely accepted as the oldest unequivocal evidence...

Life reconstruction of Australopithecus sediba commissioned by the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History. Image credit: Elisabeth Daynes / S. Entressangle.

Australopithecus sediba Comfortably Walked on Two Legs, But Could Climb Like Ape

Nov 24, 2021 by News Staff

Paleoanthropologists have discovered and examined the fossil lumbar vertebrae of Australopithecus sediba, a small hominin that lived about 2 million years...

A reconstruction of Homo naledi’s head by paleoartist John Gurche, who spent some 700 hours recreating the head from bone scans. The find was announced by the University of the Witwatersrand, the National Geographic Society and the South African National Research Foundation and published in the journal eLife. Image credit: John Gurche / Mark Thiessen / National Geographic.

Paleoanthropologists Find Fossil Remains of Immature Homo naledi

Nov 5, 2021 by News Staff

An international team of paleoanthropologists has discovered a partial skull and teeth from an immature individual of Homo naledi, a recently-discovered...

Homo bodoensis had a pan-African distribution with the peripheral range extending into the eastern Mediterranean (Southeast Europe and the Levant) from which it could have contributed to the repopulation of European (and possibly Central and East Asian) demographic sinks after the glaciations. Image credit: Ettore Mazza.

Meet Homo bodoensis, New Species of Human Ancestor

Oct 29, 2021 by News Staff

Homo bodoensis lived in Africa during the early Middle Pleistocene, around 500,000 years ago, and was the direct ancestor of the Homo sapiens lineage;...

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