This is almost certainly not what Denisovans looked like

19 September 2019

A team has used DNA from an ancient fingerbone to predict what our extinct cousins the Denisovans looked like but the method is unlikely to be accurate

Oldest Denisovan art discovered on 100,000-year-old bone fragments

18 July 2019

Etchings on pieces of ancient bone found in China could be the clearest evidence yet found that the mysterious Denisovans were capable of advanced cognition

How did humans evolve from apes?

5 July 2019

Many parents dread the moment when a child asks where they came from. Charles Darwin found the subject awkward too: On the Origin of Species makes almost no mention of human evolution.

Denisovans

17 May 2019

How Earth's changing ecosystems may have driven human evolution

6 February 2019

The most detailed ever look at Earth's prehistoric climate suggests many habitats changed in the past 800,000 years – and this may be why we evolved big brains

Neanderthals may have been sprinters not endurance runners

29 January 2019

We used to think Neanderthals were long distance joggers who lived in a tundra-like wasteland, now it seems they were sprinters who occupied forests

DNA from 6000-year-old chewing gum reveals how an ancient woman lived

19 December 2018

Lola lived 6000 years ago and made glue by chewing birch bark pitch. By analysing DNA left on the pitch we know about her diet, appearance, and ancestry

AI wades into the debate on age of ancient Chinese cave murals

31 October 2018

The dates of some murals in the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas in China have long been debated, so researchers are using AI to help settle the row

Neanderthals may have powered their bigger bodies by breathing deeper

30 October 2018

The Neanderthal rib cage was about the same size as ours but a different shape, which suggests the extinct humans could take in more air with each breath

The tamed ape: were humans the first animal to be domesticated?

21 February 2018

Deep inside our genome are bits of DNA we share only with animals such as dogs and cattle. Our self-domestication may have been a pivotal moment in making us human