Haematite tubes from the NSB hydrothermal vent deposits that represent the oldest microfossils and evidence for life on Earth. Credit: Matthew Dodd
Remains of microorganisms at least 3,770 million years old have been discovered by an international team led by...
A new study shows that ancient Siberian hunters created heat resistant pots so that they could cook hot meals - surviving the harshest seasons of the ice age by extracting nutritious bone grease and marrow from meat.
The research—which was...
Stonehenge, a Neolithic wonder in southern England, has vexed historians and archaeologists for centuries with its many mysteries: How was it built? What purpose did it serve? Where did its towering sandstone boulders come from?
That last question may finally...
A 180 million-year-old fossil has shed light on how some ancient crocodiles evolved into dolphin-like animals.
The specimen—featuring a large portion of backbone—represents a missing link in the family tree of crocodiles, and was one of the largest coastal predators...
The complete mitogenome of Pestera Muierii woman has been retrieved.Credit: E. Trinkaus and A. Soficaru
A research group has managed to retrieve the mitochondrial genome of a fossil 35,000 years old found in the Pestera Muierii cave in Romania. That...
Based on a manual recently discovered in a 3,500-year-old medical papyrus, University of Copenhagen Egyptologist Sofie Schiødt has been able to help reconstruct the embalming process used to prepare ancient Egyptians for the afterlife. It is the oldest surviving...
Careful examination of numerous fluted spear points found in Alaska and western Canada prove that the Ice Age peopling of the Americas was much more complex than previously believed, according to a study done by two Texas A&M University...
UCLA evolutionary biologist Blaire Van Valkenburgh has spent more than three decades studying the skulls of many species of large carnivores—including wolves, lions and tigers— that lived from 50,000 years ago to the present. She reports today in the...
The first evidence of human occupation in northern France has been put back by 150,000 years, thanks to the findings of a team of scientists from the CNRS and the Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle at the emblematic site of...
Throughout life's history on earth, biological diversity has gone through ebbs and flows—periods of rapid evolution and of dramatic extinctions. We know this, at least in part, through the fossil record of marine invertebrates left behind since the Cambrian...
Skeletal fossils of the hand of Homo naledi pictured in the Wits bone vault at the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, on Sept. 13, 2014. The fossil hand is one of many...
