Page 102 - Human Evolution News Today

The Descent of Man "got right and wrong about human evolution." From natural selection to sexual selection Originally published in two volumes, The Descent of Man covered diverse aspects of animal and human animal life, ranging from comparative anatomy to mental faculties, the ability to use reason, morality, memory and imagination, or how animals choose to have sex and with whom or what. "Darwin proposed that sexual selection was instrumental in explaining the origin of what he called human r...

22 February 2021 - Wits University The NRF has re-awarded A-ratings to four Wits scientists, a grading which confirms that they are recognised as leading international scholars in their fields. The A-ratings of Professor Christopher Henshilwood, Professor Bruce Rubidge, Professor Bob Scholes, and Professor Roger Smith apply from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2026. According to the National Research Foundation (NRF), an A-rating indicates “researchers who are unequivocally recognised by their ...

February 18, 2021 Dr. David Green, associate professor of anatomy, co-authored a paper published today in Their published findings suggest that Homo antecessor shoulder development was nearly identical to that of Homo sapiens. The authors concluded that H. antecessor shoulders were already very similar to modern humans, even during the Lower Pleistocene (~850,000) years ago.  “This is my first foray into a study of “archaic” humans, ancient hominins that are more humanlike than apes...

How Do Animals Perceive Time? I’m writing this on a Tuesday, at 2:26 p.m. Minutes ago, it was 9 a.m., or so it feels; back then, I was enjoying the delusion, refreshed each morning, that I’d accomplish what I needed to do today. I still might—there are hours left in the workday—but I’m wiser than I was when I woke up five hours ago: it’ll be 7pm soon, the day definitively in tatters. Another of Time’s routine beatdowns. Advertisement One advantage of being a cat, or a stingray, is...

Early humans in China: DNA analysis points to later arrival than previously thought CNN 2/11/2021 © Xiongxin Yang This is the entrance to Fuyan Cave. Experts hailed the discovery in 2015 as "stunning" -- 47 teeth found in a cave in southern China dated back to 80,0000 to 120,000 years ago, challenging widely accepted ideas about human evolution. It suggested that Homo sapiens were in China at least 20,000 years earlier than early modern humans had been previously believed to have left Afr...

Follow Feb. 10, 2021 A horn made from a conch shell found in France almost a century ago has been played for the first time in about 18,000 years, scientists announced on Wednesday. If its characterization as a shell-horn is correct, the conch found in Marsoulas Cave is the earliest known wind instrument made of shell, Carole Fritz of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and colleagues reported in Science Advances.  “Anthropologists and ethnomusicologists assert that th...

Follow Feb. 8, 2021 If you are blindfolded and grab an elephant’s tail, absent other clues you might think you’re the proud owner of a hairy snake. The more evidence you accrue, the closer to the truth you may approach. That’s the story of human evolution. All new evidence must be parsimoniously fit into the puzzle and where it flouts previous assumptions, the discredited assumptions, however credible when made, must be junked. Now, what were thought to be signs of modern humans from as m...

It suggested that Homo sapiens were in China at least 20,000 years earlier than early modern humans had been previously believed to have left Africa and spread around the world.

Researchers Just Looked at Neanderthal Poop to Understand Their Guts Photo: University of Bologna Around 50,000 years ago, a bunch of Neanderthals made a home—and a bathroom —out of what is now a rocky escarpment south of Valencia, Spain. Over the last few years, some of those paleo-poops, the oldest known to come from a human species, have been excavated and analyzed. Now, researchers have caught a glimpse of the ecosystems that existed in the guts of those early hominins, from a fecal dep...

Prehistoric teeth hint at humans mating with Neanderthals Share This Neanderthals and early modern humans living in Europe and parts of Asia overlapped for several thousand years. | Courtesy Natural History Museum (CNN) — Early modern humans and Neanderthals lived in Europe and parts of Asia at the same time — overlapping for several thousands of years before our archaic relatives disappeared around 40,000 years ago. During this time, Homo sapiens and Neanderthals encountered each other an...