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Categories: Anthropology: Early Humans, Ecology: Invasive Species

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An international team has reconstructed the genome organization of the earliest common ancestor of all mammals. The reconstructed ancestral genome could help in understanding the evolution of mammals and in conservation of modern animals. The earliest mammal ancestor likely looked like the fossil animal 'Morganucodon' which lived about 200 million years ago.

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Interdisciplinary research in southern Ethiopia enabled the deciphering of eastern Africa's climatic heartbeat and shows how key phases of climate change influenced human evolution, dispersal and innovation.

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Mutations can drastically help or hurt the odds of an organism surviving and reproducing. Researchers have created a computer program called ExtRaINSIGHT that tracks the history of harmful mutations throughout human evolution. They've discovered several regions of the genome are especially vulnerable to mutations, meaning any mutations there could lead to severe or lethal consequences.

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In the largest early-medieval population study to date, an interdisciplinary team consisting of geneticists and archaeologists analyzed over 400 individuals from ancient Britain, Ireland, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. The results show in detail one of the largest population transformations in the post-Roman world.

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A team of scientists has discovered the earliest gibbon fossil, a find that helps fill a long-elusive evolutionary gap in the history of apes.

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The skulls of tetrapods had fewer bones than extinct and living fish, limiting their evolution for millions of years, according to a latest study.

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The question of what makes modern humans unique has long been a driving force for researchers. Comparisons with our closest relatives, the Neanderthals, therefore provide fascinating insights. The increase in brain size, and in neuron production during brain development, are considered to be major factors for the increased cognitive abilities that occurred during human evolution. However, while both Neanderthals and modern humans develop brains of similar size, very little is known about whether modern human and Neanderthal brains may have differed in terms of their neuron production during development. Researchers now show that the modern human variant of the protein TKTL1, which differs by only a single amino acid from the Neanderthal variant, increases one type of brain progenitor cells, called basal radial glia, in the modern human brain.

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Scientists use genomic data to resolve the phylogeny of zygnematophyte algae and pinpoint several emergences of multicellularity in the closest known relatives of terrestrial plants.

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The modalities and date of emergence of bipedalism remain bitterly debated, in particular because of a small number of very old human fossils. Sahelanthropus tchadensis, discovered in 2001 in Chad, is considered to be the oldest representative of the humankind. The shape of its cranium suggests a bipedal station. The description of three limb bones of Sahelanthropus confirms habitual bipedalism, but not exclusively.

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Research has established that there are traces of Neandertal DNA in the genome of modern humans. Now an exploratory study that assessed the facial structure of prehistoric skulls is offering new insights, and supports the hypothesis that much of this interbreeding took place in the Near East -- the region ranging from North Africa to Iraq.

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Did the 12th century B.C.E. -- a time when humans were forging great empires and developing new forms of written text -- coincide with an evolutionary reduction in brain size? Think again, says a team of researchers whose new paper refutes a hypothesis that's growing increasingly popular among the science community.

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New research provide evidence that the crustacean carapace, along with other plate-like structures in arthropods (crustaceans, insects, arachnids, and myriapods) all evolved from a lateral leg lobe in a common ancestor more than 500 million years ago. This work further supports their proposal for a new concept of how novel structures evolve -- one which suggests that they aren't so novel, after all.

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Researchers find that stem cells in the developing brain of modern humans take longer to divide and make fewer errors when distributing their chromosomes to their daughter cells, compared to those of Neanderthals.

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A newly identified 16th century horse specimen is among the oldest domestic horses from the Americas known to date, and its DNA helps clarify the history of horses in the Western Hemisphere, according to a new study.

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Whether by the spear or the plow, humans have been homogenizing the mammal communities of North America for 10,000-plus years, says a new analysis of 8,831 fossils representing 365 species.

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The study of the genomes of our closest relatives, the Neanderthals and Denisovans, has opened up new research paths that can broaden our understanding of the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens. A new study has made an estimation of the time when some of the genetic variants that characterize our species emerged. It does so by analyzing mutations that are very frequent in modern human populations, but not in these other species of archaic humans.

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For the first time, researchers successfully sequenced the genome of ancient human fossils from the Late Pleistocene in southern China. The data suggests that the mysterious hominin belonged to an extinct maternal branch of modern humans that might have contributed to the origin of Native Americans.

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In a new paper, researchers challenge the longstanding view that the force of natural selection in humans must decline to zero once reproduction is complete. They assert that a long post-reproductive lifespan is not just due to recent advancements in health and medicine. The secret to our success? Our grandparents.

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The fossil record tells us about ancient life through the preserved remains of body parts like bones, teeth and turtle shells. But how to study the history of soft tissues and organs, which can decay quickly, leaving little evidence behind? In a new study, scientists use gene expression patterns, called transcriptomics, to investigate the ancient origins of one organ: the placenta, which is vital to pregnancy.

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New genetic research from remote islands in the Pacific offers fresh insights into the ancestry and culture of the world's earliest seafarers, including family structure, social customs, and the ancestral populations of the people living there today.