Ancestors

Life reconstruction of Olympicetus thalassodon pursuing a school of fishes alongside plotopterid birds (background) somewhere in the eastern North Pacific Ocean. Credit: Art by Cullen TownsendPaleontologists have discovered a new <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>species</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>A species is a group of living organisms that share a set of common characteristics and are able to breed and…

Looking back at the entrance of Tam Pà Ling cave from the cave floor. The excavation pit is the left of this location. Credit: Kira Westaway (Macquarie University)Tam Pà Ling, a cave located in the northern region of Laos, unveils new insights into the earliest human migrations from Africa all the way to Australia.What links a fossil discovered in a northern Laotian cave to ancient stone tools from northern Australia? It’s us, Homo sapiens. As our forebears journeyed from Africa to Australia, they marked their path with…

John Samuelsen conducting gradiometry survey at the Crenshaw site in southwest Arkansas. Credit: University of Arkansas Hundreds of human skulls and mandibles recovered from the Crenshaw site in southwest Arkansas are the remains of ancestors of the Caddo Nation and not foreign enemies, according to a new study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science. …

Looking back at the entrance of Tam Pà Ling cave from the cave floor. The excavation pit is to the left of this location. Credit: Copyright Kira Westaway (Macquarie University) What connects a fossil found in a cave in northern Laos with stone tools made in north Australia? The answer is, we do. When our early Homo sapiens ancestors first arrived in Southeast Asia on their way from Africa to Australia, they left evidence of…

By MARUM - Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen June 12, 2023Artist’s imagination of an assemblage of primordial eukaryotic organisms of the ‘Protosterol Biota’ inhabiting a bacterial mat on the ocean floor. Based on molecular fossils, organisms of the Protosterol Biota lived in the oceans about 1.6 to 1.0 billion years ago and are our earliest known ancestors. Credit: Orchestrated in MidJourney by TA 2023A multinational research team has found ancient protosteroids in rocks, indicating that…

There are all kinds of bacteria living in our gut, contributing to the healthy (or unhealthy) processes going on inside our bodies, but it turns out that we've lost a lot of the microbes that we once shared with our ancient primate ancestors.Looking at genetic material in the guts of modern-day chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes and P. t. schweinfurthii) and bonobos (P. paniscus), researchers traced back the lineages of their gut bacteria millions of years, before comparing them with the microbes that now live in…

Researchers have discovered the earliest examples of human footprints in Germany. They're so old, it's unlikely they were made by any species live today.Stretching back some 300,000 years through time, it's thought they were made not by Homo sapiens, but by the ancient (and now extinct) 'Heidelberg people' (or Homo heidelbergensis).The impressions provide researchers with a fascinating glimpse into the way early humans lived, discovered alongside animal footprints in the Schöningen Paleolithic site in Lower Saxony,…

Flowering Karoo Desert in spring, near Willowmore, Eastern Cape, Southafrica. Credit: Winfried Bruenken (Amrum)/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA Lining the Cape of South Africa and its southern coast are long chains of caves that nearly 200,000 years ago were surrounded by a lush landscape and plentiful food. During a glacial phase that…

New research suggests the Prochlorococcus microbe’s ancient coastal ancestors colonized the ocean by rafting out on chitin particles. Credit: Jose-Luis Olivares/MITA new study shows that carbon-capturing phytoplankton colonized the ocean by rafting on particles of chitin.<span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>MIT</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>MIT is an acronym for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is a…

Image of fruit belonging to Palaeophytocrene chicoensis. The Sierra College Museum of Natural History is the permanent repository for this fossil. Credit: Brian AtkinsonAn ancient 80-million-year-old fossil plant rewrites the history of lamiids, revealing that these flowering plants, including staple crops, evolved earlier than previously believed and suggesting complex rainforests may have existed 80 million years ago.The discovery of an 80-million-year-old fossil plant pushes back the known origins of lamiids to the…