Paranthropus robustus
The discovery of a two-million-year-old skull in South Africa is shedding important new light on microevolution in an early hominin species, as Jesse Martin and Angeline Leece reveal.
Palaeolithic
World news in brief
10,000 year old footprints identified in New Mexico, Neolithic assemblage found in Norway, and AMS dating of Upper Palaeolithic cave art in Spain.
Rare child burial in Indonesia
A sub-adult burial dating to the early-mid Holocene, c.8000 BP, has been found in Makpan Cave on Alor Island, south-eastern Indonesia. To date, only a few complete pre-Neolithic burials have been found in Island South-east Asia, despite the region’s vast…
News in brief: Italy, Persia, North America
Late Neanderthal tooth Investigation into a canine tooth found at Riparo Broion, a rock shelter in Vicenza, north-eastern Italy, has revealed that it may represent an important piece of direct evidence for late Neanderthal occupation in the area. The tooth…
Early human footprints in Saudi Arabia
The footprints were discovered as part of the Palaeodeserts Project, which is examining climate change and human evolution in Saudi Arabia.
The disappearing Neanderthal Y chromosome
Over the last decade, developments in genetic sequencing, as well as in the successful extraction of DNA from increasingly older and even contaminated remains, have allowed our knowledge of ancient hominins to expand exponentially. But even with these advances, our…
World News: Mexico, Germany, Kazakhstan
Ochre mining in Mexico Evidence for the mining of red ochre has been discovered in the now-submerged caves of Quintana Roo in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Dated to between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago, this is the earliest-known exploitation of this…
Lascaux IV
As far as I could tell, every minor contour of the original has been replicated, as of course have the paintings themselves.
Discovering Denny
Charles Higham looks at how a routine DNA analysis resulted in a stunning discovery about the prehistory of our human past