A newly reconstructed fossil face from Ethiopia reveals surprising complexity in early human evolution. By digitally fitting together teeth and fossilized bone fragments, researchers reconstructed a ...

Have you ever spent hours crafting a timeline chart, only to abandon it because it was too clunky, rigid, or just plain uninspiring? You’re not alone. Many tools promise sleek visuals but fall short ...

Researchers have identified gene-regulatory variants that might have contributed to Neanderthals’ beefy jaws — offering a window on how the human face developed 1. This ‘non-coding’ sequence controls ...

The Jomon people living in prehistoric Japan had "little to no" Denisovan DNA, suggesting their ancestors may not have been in contact with this now-extinct group of Eurasian humans, a new study ...

Currently, there are several hypotheses surrounding the disappearance of Neanderthals. While they all have at least some scientific support, researchers can't agree on which—or which combination—is ...

Modern humans carry traces of Denisovan DNA inherited from multiple genetically distinct groups. A new paleogenomic study pulls those threads together and shows when, where, and how that ancestry ...

For only the second time, researchers have obtained the full genome of a Denisovan, a group of ancient humans who lived in Asia. The DNA was extracted from a single 200,000-year-old tooth found in a ...

New research suggests a genetic dynamic that may have contributed to Neanderthals' extinction. Neanderthal-Museum, Mettmann CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons Did interbreeding between humans and ...

Durham University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK. The ability to make art has often been considered a hallmark of our species. Over a century ago, prehistorians even had ...

Lead exposure has been thought to be a uniquely modern phenomenon. Exposure to lead by ancient humans could have given modern humans a survival advantage over other species – more specifically, their ...

Ancient humans crossing the Bering Strait into the Americas carried more than tools and determination—they also carried a genetic legacy from Denisovans, an extinct human relative. A new study reveals ...