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LATEST ARTICLES ( 510 )

• Why Music Evolved – Huge Study Reveals Answer

  

  Music is a big part of our culture. Headphones, for example, give me an excellent excuse to ignore people. However, it's very difficult to study why music... Read more

  Posted on 07 July 2015 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Captivity Makes Apes Smarter

  

  Apes in captivity are a lot easier to keep track of. This makes them very useful for scientific studies. As such, a lot of our understanding about the... Read more

  Posted on 04 July 2015 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Regulatory DNA That Drove Human Evolution Identified

  

  You have genes that code for proteins. These are then put together to make you. Understanding these genes and how they've changed is obviously very important fo... Read more

  Posted on 02 July 2015 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Our Ancestors Were Small: A Review of Hominin Body Size

  

  Over the course of human evolution our bodies changed a lot. We began walking upright, we grew big brains and even got a bit chubby. New research into hominin... Read more

  Posted on 30 June 2015 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Can Chimpanzees Cook?

  

  Cooking food was a big leap in our evolution. It helps break down the food before we eat it, making it a lot easier for us to extract nutrients from it. In turn... Read more

  Posted on 28 June 2015 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Humans Evolved to Be Fat (and Weak)

  

  The human family split from chimps ~7 million years ago. Since then many differences have evolved between us. We began walking upright. Our brains got bigger.... Read more

  Posted on 25 June 2015 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How Old Could the Oldest Stone Tools Be?

  

  Creating stone tools was a key leap forward for our ancestors. It was so significant that scientists once thought it heralded the arrival of modern(ish) humans.... Read more

  Posted on 23 June 2015 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Cannabalistic Neanderthals Hunted Humans?

  

  Homo sapiens evolved in Africa, but we soon spread around the world. In Eurasia we encountered our close relatives, the Neanderthals. However, this family... Read more

  Posted on 22 June 2015 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Lucy Has No Backbone – Reassesing Lucy’s Vertebrae

  

  Lucy (more commonly called AL 288-1 by the public) is one of the most important skeletons of our ancestors ever found. This is because it's a very complete... Read more

  Posted on 18 June 2015 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Honey Could Help Us Live Longer, Did We Evolve to Need It?

  

  Human evolution hasn't always moved in a positive direction for us. Mutations broke our ability to make vitamin C, forcing us to get it from fruit. Our shift... Read more

  Posted on 16 June 2015 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Did Palaeolithic People Domesticate Horses?

  

  The domestication of plants and animals was the most important moment in our history. It allowed us to settle down and begin building cities and civilisation.... Read more

  Posted on 05 June 2015 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Little Foot Fossil Redated; Lucy Gets a New Friend

  

  Little Foot is one of the most important, yet enigmatic, fossils out there. It is clearly an Australopithecus - one of our early, more ape like relatives -... Read more

  Posted on 04 June 2015 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Can We Trust Chimps to Tell Us About Human Evolution?

  Chimps are our closest living relatives, but just how similar are we really? How much can they tell us about our ancestors? That's the interesting question... Read more

  Posted on 03 June 2015 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Oldest Stone Tools Found, but Who Made Them?

  Archaeologists recently announced the discovery of the oldest stone tools ever. These tools represent a key moment in our ancestors technological development.... Read more

  Posted on 02 June 2015 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Everything Old is Older – Human Evolution Discoveries (31/5/15)

  This week was a big one for human evolution; with a bunch of brand new discoveries that may prompt us to re-evaluate the timing of key moments in our... Read more

  Posted on 31 May 2015 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Chimp Culture Includes Useless Things

  Chimps are very smart. So smart they can invent new tools to deal with new situations. As a result of this different chimp groups develop different toolkits ove... Read more

  Posted on 30 May 2015 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• New Hominin Species Found: Australopithecus Deyiremeda Lived with Lucy

  The human family gets a new member as scientists have announced the discovery of a new hominin species. Australopithecus deyiremeda (meaning "close relative")... Read more

  Posted on 28 May 2015 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• What’s Significant About Carbon Isotopes?

  If you've read much about archaeology you've probably encountered the idea of "stable isotope analysis." For the uninitiated, this is basically the scientific... Read more

  Posted on 27 May 2015 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Oldest Stone Tools Found; Aren’t That Impressive

  Scientists have recently discovered the oldest stone tools; a whopping 3.3 million years old. That's half a million years older than the human family ( which... Read more

  Posted on 26 May 2015 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Them and Us: Predatory Neanderthals Hunted Humans?

  Around 50,000 years ago modern humans arrived in Europe. There they encountered the Neanderthals: a gorilla-like super-predator 6 times as strong as the... Read more

  Posted on 25 May 2015 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE