When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Scientists now recognize more than a dozen species in the Homo genus. So what, exactly, was the ...

Hand bones from a single individual with a clear taxonomic affiliation are scarce in the hominin fossil record, which has hampered understanding of the evolution of manipulative abilities in hominins.

As more and more fossil ancestors have been found, our genus has become more and more inclusive, incorporating more members that look less like us, Homo sapiens. By getting to know these other ...

After examining the fossils of two hominids that lived nearly 2 million years ago, anthropologists said that the anatomical features of the adult female and young male strongly suggest they could be ...

A startling mix of human and primitive traits found in the brains, hips, feet and hands of an extinct species identified last year make a strong case for it being the immediate ancestor to the human ...

Our ape-like ancestors may have stopped dragging their knuckles and started making tools a half million years earlier than previously thought, according to a new study. The study, published online ...

A statistical analysis was made of cheek teeth of Plio/Pleistocene hominids. Samples used were Kenya National Museum specimens usually classified as Homo habilis and Australopithecus boisei, and ...

This jawbone pushes back the evolutionary origins of our genus by nearly half a million years, researchers reported today. Paleontologists working in Ethiopia have uncovered the lower jaw and five ...

The Australopithecus sediba discovered in 2008 could be the direct ancestor of the Homo genus. That is the conclusion of an international team of scientists. The researchers describe in five papers ...

This skull belonged to Australopithecus sediba, a new hominin species recently discovered in South Africa. The two million year old fossils are some of the most complete ever discovered, and they ...

In British India a generation ago, scientists unearthed two small fossils that consisted of no more than partial jawbones and a few teeth. For many years, they gathered dust—one in London’s British ...