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Researchers have added four new members to the genus Homo: South Africa's Homo naledi, Asia's Denisovans, Indonesia's 'hobbit' H. floresiensis and, justlast year, its neighbor in the Philippines, H luzonensis. [...]

Between a rock and a hard place? That's just where Lithoredo likes it. Researchers found the new-to-science shipworm, a kind of clam, in the Abatan River on the Philippines' Bohol [...]

Chubby-cheeked babies, wide-eyed puppies and wobbly kittens: We know cute when we see it. We're still learning, however, what it does to our brains and behavior. Once thought to trigger [...]

EARTH IS ACTION-PACKED. Even if there were zero life on our planet, the place would be full of birth and death, marriage, breakup and even a little dirty dancing. That's [...]

Whatever you learned in school about how our species spread across the planet is wrong. For decades, textbooks taught that humans left our ancestral African homeland and spread across the [...]

Misinformation and outdated science abound when it comes to attaining our fittest selves. Gyms, social media and infomercials throw around buzzwords and promote fad routines, leaving many of us bewildered [...]

Mighty Mansourasaurus: More Than the Sum of Its Parts When Mansourasaurus was formally described in January in Nature Ecology & Evolution, it represented more than just a cool new fossil. [...]

The deadliest and most devastating opponents our species has faced have never been across a battlefield. They've been on our skin and in our blood and bones. Viruses and bacteria [...]

Congratulations, you're part of the 1 percent. That is, the 1 percent of species on Earth not yet extinct: For the last 3.5 billion or so years, about 99 percent [...]

Smeared on shells, piled in graves, stamped and stenciled on cave walls from South Africa to Australia, Germany to Peru, ochre has been a part of the human story since [...]

Shiny and sharp, obsidian is enjoying a bit of a pop culture moment. It plays a central role in HBO's hit fantasy series Game of Thrones, now wrapping its final [...]

More than a thousand years ago, the Vikings arrived on the world stage as swiftly as their longships cut through the waves. They raided and traded, conquered and colonized. They [...]

FEATURES Researchers have added four new members to the genus Homo: South Africa's Homo naledi, Asia's Denisovans, Indonesia's "hobbit" H. floresiensis and, just last year, its neighbor in the Philippines, H. luzonensis. Much of the new research involves high-tech analysis of fragmentary fossils or genetic code - but no single tooth, scrap of finger bone or shiny piece of lab equipment captures our attention quite like a skull. "Our mindsets are like shop display windows that separate us from the mannequins: We look at these fossil skulls through our own mirror images and imaginations", Zollikofer says. [Extracted from the article]

Much of what defines us as a species is all in our heads. First and foremost, we've got these big, powerful brains, and small faces tucked underneath a skull that [...]

Photographed in May in Dongguan, China, an engineer stands beneath a 5G base station antenna that's part of a state-of-the-art testing facility for controversial telecom giant Huawei. - IMAGE BY DPA PICTURE ALLIANCE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO - ENHANCED IMAGE BY GERALD EICHSTÄDT AND SEÁN DORAN (CC BY-NC-SA), BASED ON IMAGES PROVIDED COURTESY OF NASA/JPLCALTECH/SWRI/MSSS. [Extracted from the article]

Or, as his University of Michigan colleague Stephanie Preston puts it: "If there's pressure to evolve a bigger brain, the brain can only get so big and still make it through the birth canal. What they also found, however, was rapid activity in the orbitofrontal cortex, "an emotional part of the brain", says Kringelbach, and an area also linked to reward-motivated behavior. While the project did not involve brain scans (though they may be part of the team's future research), Steinnes suspects that "the same brain systems activated when we see something cute also activate when we feel kama muta". Both Steinnes and Kringelbach cited recent media coverage of refugees, asylum-seekers and other people in distress: When images of the groups include infants and young children, public perception is more positive, and the viewer's desire to help is increased. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses lithosphere and its puzzle pieces that are always in motion. Topics discussed include views of scientist Alfred Lothar Wegener on landmasses, reconstructions of locations, and plate tectonic theory, massive shifts in ocean currents and its impact on global climate, and iconic animal groups.

The article discusses the history of human expansion across the globe. Topics mentioned include the use of cutting-edge technologies to explore on the early human dispersal and the reconstruct the ancient worlds, the role of the scientists to fill in the human knowledge about the continent-sized and the epoch of human evolution.

"The research doesn't support that a cooldown will reduce muscle soreness, because the muscle damage has already been done (during the workout)", says Comana. To exercise scientist Sandra Hunter, the director of Marquette University's Athletic and Human Performance Research Center, both functional fitness and resistance training have their place in the workout world. "The burpee is a good exercise, but there are better aerobic exercises for you to do, and there are a lot of other, better things you could do for strength training", says Harry Dorrell, who researches strength and conditioning at England's University of Lincoln. [Extracted from the article]

The article reports on scientific findings related to paleontology. A paper in "Nature Ecology & Evolution" has formally described Monsourasaurus, which lived in Egypt's Dakha Oasia. A roadwork salvage project by a team led by paleontologist Robert Gess in South Africa has challenged ideas about the evolution of tetrapods, known as the earliest land vertebrates. A paper published in July has described the discovery of an amber that preserved a snake for about 100 million years.

The article reports on scientific findings related to human origins and human brain development. Two studies published in the journal "Cell" in May 2018 focused on the NOTCH family of genes to explore the genetic changes behind the human brain. A number of finds has charted a new course for the earliest hominins, particularly the map of when and how members of the genus Homo has spread. A trio of studies in 2018 discovered that Neanderthals were capable of complex abstract thought.

The article discusses two key advances which allow scientists to study bacteria and viruses that are causing diseases. These key advances are advanced data-crunching software and ancient genomes available for study. Viruses and bacteria have reportedly debilitated or killed millions of people throughout history. It notes that studying the past will enable people to foresee future events.

The article discusses how mass extinctions damage ecological hierarchies, with the surviving species often thriving and exploding in diversity and territory. It notes that sea sponges survived in the aftermath of the End-Ordovician phase. Several species of fungus survived as they fed off all the decaying organisms that did not.

The fungus among us is a key player in the ecosystem, breaking down organic matter to provide nutrients to other organisms. Now we know that fungi were getting down to [...]

A really old rhino tooth has opened a new path toward understanding the tree of life--including, potentially, our own branch. In September, researchers detailed in Nature how, using the tooth [...]

CHRONOSTRA-WHAT? The long word may be new to you, but you'll find the concept familiar. Case in point: Jurassic Park. You can thank chronostratigraphy for the name, even though any [...]

The article presents several information related to tetrapods which includes all living and extinct amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Topics discussed include information on Eusthenopteron which is the lobe-finned fishes four meaty limbs have the same pattern of bones seen in the limbs of all tetrapods; adaptations for aquatic tetrapods such as locomotion, respiration and sensory system; and information on discovery of terrestrial tetrapod tracks in Poland.

The article discusses the history of the volcanic glass or obsidian which use for toolmaking with its unique chemical attributes. It highlights the prehistoric record of obsidian scrapers, choppers and all-purpose hand axes. It also cites the chemistry of the artifact with a database of geochemical signatures unique to individual sources.

1 A horse is a horse, of course, of course, as the old Mister Ed theme song goes--but don't look for such certainty when it comes to tracing the lineage [...]

1 I think that I shall never see an organism as vital as a tree. Without these woody, perennial members of the plant kingdom, we might still be squirming around [...]

How to Build a Brain The human brain is a big deal. In relation to body size, it's nearly six times bigger than that of other placental mammals. Our brains' [...]

How well do we know ourselves? The fossil record of hominins, our ancestors and closest kin, is limited, and the exploration of our collective deep history through genetic analysis is [...]

The article focuses on a new genetic research related to origins of dogs published in the journal "Science" in June 2016. Topics include finding of the research that dogs were domesticated not once but twice, on opposite ends of the Eurasian continent at least 15,000 years ago, every dog alive today stated to have descended from ancient Asian roots, and views of Belgian paleontologist Mietje Germonpré on the same.

The article discusses the context of human evolution from arboreal ancestors to big-brained, long-limbed, built-for-distance-walking species. It highlights the discovery of several human fossils from the caves in the mountain valleys that shows the DNA of the ancient people. It also cites several types of human fossils including the Java man, the Altamura man and the Homo Erectus.

The article features paleontologist Nizar Ibrahim who found fame when he found a partial skeleton of Spinosaurus dinosaur in the Sahara Desert. Topics mentioned include the importance of fossil research, the social aspects of dinosaurs research, and the research on Sigilmassasaurus dinosaur by doctoral candidate Serjoscha Evers at Oxford University.

1 Have you ever stopped to consider the door? This most mundane of architectural elements might surprise you. For example, humans are not the only species to construct doors. 2 [...]

1 Biological discoveries can be downright shocking. In September in Nature Communications, biologists identified two new electric eels, the first additions to the Electrophorus genus in 250 years. 2 Of [...]

It was the size of a polar bear, with a mouth full of slashing blades. Some 22 million years ago, in what's now Kenya, the mega-carnivore Simbakubwa kutokaafrika ruled. Then [...]

Smaller than a sparrow, a 99-million-year-old bird preserved in amber made some very big news in July. 'I've never seen anything like this, or even close,' says paleontologist Jingmai O'Connor [...]

It's a big honkin' animal.' That's how College of Charleston paleontologist Scott Persons describes the fossil that happens to share his name. 'Scotty,' named for a celebratory bottle of scotch [...]

A scrap of skull collected in 1978 and stored for decades in an Athens museum may rewrite the timeline of when Homo sapiens left our ancestral African homeland. In July, [...]

1 With forelimbs like clawed shovels, little or no eyesight and a penchant for tunneling, the much-maligned mole is considered a monster by many a gardener. But dig into the [...]

* Gotta love those long-hairs. We're talking comets, of course. The word derives from kometes, ancient Greek for 'a head with long hair.'2 While the Greeks began using the term [...]

1 When Apollo 11 touched down on the moon, could Neil Armstrong have made a 'giant leap' if we'd never evolved feet? 'One small slither for man' just doesn't have [...]

1 Why are there so many songs about rainbows? It could be because the meteorological phenomena, beautiful yet ephemeral, inspire our inner romantics. Or maybe it's because no one sees [...]

1 Don't look to Pete Seeger's lyric 'turn, turn, turn' to explain the seasons. It's really tilt, tilt, tilt. Earth has seasons because its axis is tilted about 23.5 degrees, [...]

Stumped on what to get someone for the holidays? Stuff that stocking with knowledge, adventure and entertainment: Give a book. We've picked out our favorites, one for each of the [...]

The article informs that researchers recently found that about 100,000 years ago, the human population had become anatomically modern humans who, around 50,000 years ago, headed across Eurasia and met up with our distant cousins the Neanderthals, as of January 2018. It mentions that earlier it was believed that an archaic form of Homo sapiens evolved around 200,000 years ago in Africa.

The article focuses on the research regarding ancient proteins hidden in fossils and artifacts with the extraction and sequencing of ancient DNA. It mentions study of ancient proteins, paleoproteomics is an emerging interdisciplinary and paleontology, paleoanthropology and archaeology and researchers identified proteins in fossils using a type of mass spectrometer. It also mentions detecting proteins by using antibodies that would recognize the protein.

The article presents information on the evolution of the sounds of lullabies and singing that enables the human infants survives as well as her/his parents. It mentions the statement of several experts, including Sandra Trehub, professor emeritus at University of Toronto Mississauga, and Shannon de l'Etoile, a professor of music therapy at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. It also mentions the book "Evolution and Human Behavior" by Max Krasnow and Samuel Mehr.