Hundreds of millennia before our own species left Africa, an archaic hominin related to Homo erectus embarked on its own ...

A new analysis offossilized limb bones suggests that Australopithecus, an early human ancestor, combined substantial time in trees with a way of using its legs that resembled our own. The study, led ...

Modern genomes preserve traces of ancient relatives that mixed with human ancestors in Africa and Eurasia.

In 1998, researchers discovered one of the most complete known human ancestral fossils in South Africa’s Sterkfontein Caves. Almost two decades later, Ronald Clarke, the paleoanthropologist who had ...

When studying how fossil hominids moved, researchers usually analyze the morphology of bones—which is crucial for understanding the evolution of bipedalism—focusing mainly on muscle insertion sites.

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Human evolutionary science has long been caught up in a debate: Did our last common ancestor with apes walk on its knuckles, like ...

A 2-million-year-old skull fragment from South Africa may be an adult Homo erectus, predating previously discovered fossils ...

On the right is a depiction of an early Homo human ancestor characterized by relatively greater bone strength of the femur in the thigh compared to the humerus in the arm. To the left is a depiction ...

In 2001, researchers unearthed a scattering of fossils beneath the windswept dunes of the Djurab Desert of northern Chad. The remains were later identified as belonging to an extinct species, ...

It was there that the case of the Denisovan pinkie bone took a startling turn. Pääbo, a transplanted Swede, is arguably the ...

Gut bacteria may have accompanied humans for thousands of years, but many species are missing from industrialized populations ...

The human genome holds genetic traces of at least two ancient relatives whose identities remain unknown. Their DNA survives alongside genes inherited from Neanderthals and Denisovans, revealing a ...