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Africa: How 17-Million-Year-Old Ape Teeth Could Lead to New Insights On Early Human Evolution
The Conversation Africa, 22 August 2022
The timing and intensity of the seasons shapes life all around us, including tool use by birds, the evolutionary diversification of giraffes, and the behaviour of our close primate… Read more »
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South Africa: I Was Part of the Team That Found the Homo Naledi Child's Skull - How We Did It
Daily Maverick, 17 November 2021
In 2015 a new member was introduced to the family tree of humans. Fossil hominins from the Rising Star cave system outside Johannesburg, South Africa, were found to belong to a… Read more »
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South Africa: Fossil Discovery Offers More Evidence of Ritualistic Behavior By Extinct Hominins
VOA, 12 November 2021
Scientists in South Africa have announced the discovery of the first partial Homo Naledi child's skull in one of the world's richest hominin fossil sites. Read more »
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South Africa: I Was Part of the Team That Found the Homo Naledi Child's Skull - How We Did It
The Conversation Africa, 4 November 2021
In 2015 a new member was introduced to the family tree of humans. Fossil hominins from the Rising Star cave system outside Johannesburg, South Africa, were found to belong to a… Read more »
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North Africa: Our North African Ancestors Were Making Handaxes Earlier Than Previously Thought
The Conversation Africa, 2 November 2021
More than 1.5 million years ago, a new era dawned for our human ancestors, Homo erectus: the Acheulean culture. This period was marked by the ability to produce large cutting… Read more »
Fossil Ape Teeth May Lead to New Insight On Early Human Evolution
New research by Tanya Smith, Professor in the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution & Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University, and Daniel Green, Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Columbia University, has brought a new academic approach that leverages tooth chemistry and growth to extract information about seasonal rainfall patterns from the jaws of living and fossil primates.
The pair found several aspects in their work that proved helpful for understanding the link between environmental patterns and primate evolution. "This novel research approach, coupled with our fossil ape findings and modern primate data, will be crucial for future studies of hominin evolution - especially in Kenya's famous Turkana Basin," Smith and Green wrote for The Conversation.
InFocus
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Three new research papers have brought evidence that human evolution was a less linear process than previously theorised, according to Gizmodo's George DvorskyRead more »
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Lucy, the famed partial skeleton found in Ethiopia in 1974, has a new companion - a male skull found just 55 kilometres from her resting place, which scientists say helps to fill a ... Read more »
