The last Neanderthal necklace

Eagle talons are regarded as the first elements used to make jewellery by Neanderthals, a practice which spread around Southern Europe about 120,000 and 40,000 years ago. Now, for the first time, researchers found evidence of the ornamental uses of eagle talons in the Iberian Peninsula. An article published in the cover of the journal Science … Read more

The homeland of modern humans

A study has concluded that the earliest ancestors of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) emerged in a southern African ‘homeland’ and thrived there for 70 thousand years. The breakthrough findings are published in the prestigious journal Nature today. The authors propose that changes in Africa’s climate triggered the first human explorations, which initiated the development of … Read more

ANU to delve into deep human past to rewrite history

A world-first research centre will help broaden history as we know it by focusing on Australia’s incredible but often overlooked Indigenous past. Being launched today at The Australian National University (ANU), the new centre also aims to broaden the discipline of history as we know it, expanding its time scale into “deep history”. The Research … Read more

The earliest well-preserved tetrapod may never have left the water

Superbly preserved fossils from Russia, excavated with support of a grant from the National Geographic Society and described today by an international team in the leading scientific journal Nature, cast new and surprising light on one of the earliest tetrapods – the group of animals that made the evolutionary transition from water to land and ultimately … Read more

It really was the asteroid

Fossil remains of tiny calcareous algae not only provide information about the end of the dinosaurs, but also show how the oceans recovered after the fatal asteroid impact. Experts agree that a collision with an asteroid caused a mass extinction on our planet, but there were hypotheses that ecosystems were already under pressure from increasing … Read more

480-million-year-old arthropods formed orderly queues

Fossils of ancient arthropods discovered in linear formation may indicate a collective behaviour either in response to environmental cues or as part of seasonal reproductive migration. The findings, which are being published in Scientific Reports this week, suggest that group behaviours comparable to those of modern animals existed as early as 480 million years ago. Collective and … Read more

Social inequality in Bronze Age households

Archaeogenetic analyses provide new insights into social inequality 4000 years ago: nuclear families lived together with foreign women and individuals from lower social classes in the same household. Social inequality already existed in southern Germany 4000 years ago, even within one household, a new study published in the journal Science finds. Archaeological and archaeogenetic analyses of Bronze … Read more

Meet Siamraptor suwati, a new species of giant predatory dinosaur from Thailand

Fossils discovered in Thailand represent a new genus and species of predatory dinosaur, according to a study released October 9, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Duangsuda Chokchaloemwong of Nakhon Ratchasima Rajabhat University, Thailand and colleagues. Carcharodontosaurs were a widespread and successful group of large predatory dinosaurs during the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods and were … Read more

Study finds prehistoric humans ate bone marrow like canned soup 400,000 years ago

Tel Aviv University researchers, in collaboration with scholars from Spain, have uncovered evidence of the storage and delayed consumption of animal bone marrow at Qesem Cave near Tel Aviv, the site of many major discoveries from the late Lower Paleolithic period some 400,000 years ago. The research provides direct evidence that early Paleolithic people saved … Read more