Hominid Hunting

Skull fragments from a 2-year-old child (exterior view, top left; interior view, top right) that died 1.5 million years ago contain evidence of anemia. The blood disorder can lead to very porous bone (bottom left, right).

Fossils Reveal Earliest Known Case of Anemia in Hominids

2-year-old child that lived 1.5 million years ago suffered from the blood disorder, which may suggest that hominids by this time were regularly eating meat

Oldowan choppers are among the oldest-known type of stone tools.

Becoming Human: The Origin of Stone Tools

Archaeologists are still debating when hominids started making stone tools and which species was the first toolmaker

Dating and mapping fossil finds is one way anthropologists track early human migrations. The bones from Qafzeh, Israel, (a drawing of one of the skulls, above) indicate Homo sapiens first left Africa more than 100,000 years ago.

How to Retrace Early Human Migrations

Anthropologists rely on a variety of fossil, archaeological, genetic and linguistic clues to reconstruct how people populated the world

Neanderthals may have collected feathers from dark birds, such as black vultures (shown), for ornamental purposes, a new study suggests.

Do Feathers Reveal Neanderthal Brainpower?

Neanderthals may have used feathers as personal ornaments, which suggests our cousins were capable of symbolic expression

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The Rock of Gibraltar: Neanderthals’ Last Refuge

Gibraltar hosted some of the last-surviving Neanderthals and was home to one of the first Neanderthal fossil discoveries

Human running is less efficient than the running of a typical mammal with the same body mass, a new study finds.

Energy Efficiency Doesn’t Explain Human Walking?

A new study of mammal locomotion challenges the claim that hominids evolved two-legged walking because of its energy savings

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What Was the Black Skull?

Anthropologists know little about Paranthropus aethiopicus and they don't all agree on the 2.5-million-year-old species' place in the human family tree

Eugene Dubois discovered the first hominid fossils in Indonesia when he unearthed Homo erectus bones at Trinil in 1891 and 1892.

Indonesia’s Top Five Hominid Fossil Sites

Indonesia is one of the first places where scientists discovered hominid fossils and is home to some of the oldest hominid bones outside of Africa

An artist’s reconstruction of Homo antecessor, a hominid species that butchered and ate its own kind. A new study suggests the cannibalism was a form of territorial defense.

Early Cannibalism Tied to Territorial Defense?

Researchers say chimpanzee behavior may help explain why human ancestors ate each other 800,000 years ago

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Timing of Childbirth Evolved to Match Women’s Energy Limits

Researchers find no evidence for the long-held view that the length of human gestation is a compromise between hip width and brain size

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The Oldest Human Fossils in Southeast Asia?

Researchers claim skull fragments and teeth discovered in a cave in Laos may be the oldest modern human fossils ever found in mainland Southeast Asia

In 1921, a miner found Kabwe 1, also called the Broken Hill Skull.

Five Accidental Hominid Fossil Discoveries

Sometimes finding Neanderthals, australopithecines and other human ancestors is a complete accident

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The Best Places to See Hominid Bones Online, Part II

The Internet is full of great websites where you can play with hominid fossils

An artist’s vision of a Neanderthal and her baby. If the Neanderthal lived 47,000 to 65,000 years ago, her baby might have been the result of breeding with a human.

Neanderthal and Human Matings Get a Date

New research shows modern humans bred with Neanderthals 47,000 to 65,000 years ago as our ancestors left Africa

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Tooth Chemistry Confirms Early Homo Loved Meat

Two million years ago hominids evolved more specialized diets with early Homo preferring meat and Paranthropus choosing plants

The 1972 Homo rudolfensis skull is combined in this composite image with one of the lower jaws found at Koobi Fora, Kenya.

Multiple Species of Early Homo Lived in Africa

New fossils unearthed in Kenya confirm that at least two species of Homo co-existed in Africa two million years ago

A trio of upright walkers: Lucy (middle) and Australopithecus sediba (left and right)

Becoming Human: The Evolution of Walking Upright

Walking on two legs distinguished the first hominids from other apes, but scientists still aren't sure why our ancestors became bipedal

Organic tools found at South Africa’s Border Cave include (a) wooden digging sticks, (b) poison applicator, (c) bone arrow point, (d) notched bones, (e) lump of beeswax mixed with resin and (f) beads made from marine shells and ostrich eggs.

The Origins of Modern Culture

A 44,000-year-old collection of wood and bone tools from South Africa may be the earliest example of modern culture, a new study suggests

This jaw from Kent’s Cavern is about 41,000 years old. That makes it the oldest modern human fossil in England and one of the oldest ever found in Europe.

The Top Five Human Evolution Discoveries from England

As many as four different species of hominids have lived in England, starting 800,000 years ago

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Rethinking Modern Human Origins

Did modern humans appear in the world suddenly or was our species' origin a long, drawn out process?

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