Hominids

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Why Are Humans Primates?

People may seem very different from lemurs, monkeys and apes, but all primates share a few key physical and behavioral characteristics

The 3.3-million-year-old fossils of an Australopithecus afarensis child from Dikika, Ethiopia, suggest the hominid climbed trees. The individual’s right shoulder blade (side view) is visible beneath the skull.

Fossilized Shoulder Reveals Early Hominids Climbed Trees

The shoulder blades of a 3.3-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis child suggest the species spent at least some time in the treetops

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The Mystery of Human Blood Types

The ABO blood group evolved at least 20 million years ago, but scientists still don't understand the purpose of blood types

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Whatever Happened to Kenyanthropus platyops?

Scientists disagree over whether a 3.5-million-year-old skull is a flat-faced species of hominid or just a distorted example of Australopithecus afarensis

This X-ray of a human skull highlights the main nasal cavity (orange) and the sinuses: frontal (pink), ethmoid (yellow), maxillary (green) and sphenoid (purple). Asian apes do not have frontal or ethmoid sinuses.

Clues to Ape (and Human) Evolution Can Be Seen in Sinuses

Would sinus headaches be more bearable if humans had descended from Asian apes instead of African apes?

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The Top Ten Human Evolution Discoveries from Ethiopia

Home to Lucy, Ardi, the oldest stone tools, the first fossils of modern humans and many other discoveries, Ethiopia deserves the title of Cradle of Humankind

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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