At least 27 human species have walked the Earth, but only our lineage survived. Our ancestors may have crossed a cerebral Rubicon that led to babies being born “early”
New fossils, advances in genetics, and better ways to figure out who’s related to whom show the current grouping into Homo, Australopithecus and Paranthropus doesn’t reflect the true shape of our family tree.
Paleoanthropologist Dr. Steven E. Churchill answers your questions about cavemen and early human evolution from Twitter.
Skull found in China may be Homo longi, potentially revising understanding of human evolution
For centuries, we’ve imagined Neanderthals as distant cousins. But modern humans and Neanderthals didn’t just cross paths; they repeatedly interbred, shared genes, and even merged populations over nearly 250,000 years.
Genomic sleuthing can determine how many generations have passed since a hybridization event. The oldest human genomes ever sequenced reveal that our Neandertal ancestry came from one “pulse” of interbreeding and pins down the timing.
These fossil footprints are the first definitive evidence ever that two hominin species – one our likely ancestor and the other a more distant relative – actually coexisted at the same time and place on the muddy shoreline of Lake Turkana
A recent study has challenged previous assumptions about early human tool use by examining the hand structure of ancient hominins, specifically the Australopithecus genus.
Neanderthals possessed the vocal machinery for speech and were sufficiently similar to modern humans that multiple instances of successful interbreeding occurred. But their brain structure and possibly their thinking were significantly different.
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