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A 'landmark finding': Homo naledi buried their dead 250,000 years ago, according to newly updated research
By Kristina Killgrove last updated
Homo naledi, an extinct human relative with one-third the brain size of ours, buried and may have memorialized their dead, controversial research suggests.

Why modern humans have smaller faces than Neanderthals and chimpanzees
By Kristina Killgrove published
We have smaller faces than Neanderthals and even chimps. A new study may explain how this came to be.

Neanderthals: Who were they and what did our extinct human relatives look like?
By Rebecca Wragg Sykes last updated
Discover interesting facts about who Neanderthals were, whether they mated with modern humans and when they died out.

Neanderthals, modern humans and a mysterious human lineage mingled in caves in ancient Israel, study finds
By Charles Choi published
A newly excavated cave in Israel holds burials and artifacts suggesting that multiple human species commingled and shared ideas there during the Paleolithic.

Most ancient Europeans had dark skin, eyes and hair up until 3,000 years ago, new research finds
By Tom Metcalfe published
A new study charts the genetics of skin, hair and eye color in Europe over 45,000 years.

28,000-year-old Neanderthal-and-human 'Lapedo child' lived tens of thousands of years after our closest relatives went extinct
By Kristina Killgrove published
Researchers used a novel method of radiocarbon dating to figure out the age of the Lapedo child, who had both Neanderthal and human traits.

1.5 million-year-old bone tools crafted by human ancestors in Tanzania are oldest of their kind
By Kristina Killgrove published
The discovery of 1.5 million-year-old bone tools upends what we know about tool manufacturing in East Africa.

Neanderthal 'population bottleneck' around 110,000 years ago may have contributed to their extinction
By Kristina Killgrove published
A study of the inner ear bones of Neanderthals shows a significant loss of diversity in their shape around 110,000 years ago, suggesting a genetic bottleneck that contributed to Neanderthals' decline.
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