Feature Channels: Archaeology and Anthropology

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The 3.7-billion-year-old structures were considered the first evidence for life on the planet; new evidence suggests differently.

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Excavations at two quarries in Wales, known to be the source of the Stonehenge ‘bluestones’, provide new evidence of megalith quarrying 5,000 years ago, according to a new UCL-led study.

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The rich levels of biodiversity on land seen across the globe today are not a recent phenomenon: diversity on land has been similar for at least the last 60 million years, since soon after the extinction of the dinosaurs.

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Coinciding with the Pit Grave culture (4200-3600 years before our era), coming from Southern Europe, the Neolithic communities of the north-eastern Iberian Peninsula started a ceremonial activity related to the sacrifice and burial of dogs.

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Marine scientists from the University of Queensland, WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) and other groups have developed a methodology to assess fish stocks that combines new data with archeological and historical records – some dating back to the 8th Century AD.

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An exceptional sauropod dinosaur specimen from the middle Cretaceous of Tanzania represents a unique species and provides new insights into sauropod evolution, according to a study published February 13, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Eric Gorscak of Midwestern University, Illinois, and Patrick O’Connor of Ohio University, USA.

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Gallery 400 exhibit at UIC looks at climate insecurity around the world.

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A new oviraptorosaur species from the Late Cretaceous was discovered in Mongolia, according to a study published in February 6, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Yuong-Nam Lee from Seoul National University, South Korea, and colleagues.

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The University of Michigan Museum of Natural History announced today it will re-open to the public Sunday, April 14, in a brand-new building.

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A 150-year-old fossil feather mystery has been solved by an international research team including Dr Michael Pittman from the Department of Earth Sciences, The University of Hong Kong.

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Sexual assault victims wearing the hijab or niqab are viewed more positively when testifying in court than uncovered women reveals a study.

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Scientists have just discovered a dinosaur relative that lived in Antarctica 250 million years ago. The iguana-sized reptile's genus name, Antarctanax, means "Antarctic king."

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Ancient cremated human remains, despite being deformed, still retain sexually diagnostic physical features, according to a study released January 30, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Claudio Cavazzuti of Durham University, UK and colleagues. The authors provide a statistical approach for identifying traits that distinguish male and female remains within a population.

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A much debated ancient human skull from Mongolia has been dated and genetically analysed, showing that it is the earliest modern human yet found in the region

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Long-necked dinosaurs (sauropods) could orient their forefeet both forward and sideways. The orientation of their feet depended on the speed and centre of mass of the animals.

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Neanderthals have been imagined as the inferior cousins of modern humans, but a new study by archaeologists at UCL reveals for the first time that they produced weaponry advanced enough to kill at a distance.

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Paleontologists at the University of Chicago have discovered the first detailed fossil of a hagfish, the slimy, eel-like carrion feeders of the ocean. The 100-million-year-old fossil helps answer questions about when these ancient, jawless fish branched off the evolutionary tree from the lineage that gave rise to modern-day jawed vertebrates, including bony fish and humans.

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The world of the dinosaurs just got a bit more bizarre with a newly discovered species of freshwater shark whose tiny teeth resemble the alien ships from the popular 1980s video game Galaga.

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The fossil site of Malapa in the Cradle of Humankind, South Africa, discovered by Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in August 2008, has been one of the most productive sites of the 21st century for fossils of early human ancestors or hominins. A new hominin species, Australopithecus sediba (Au. sediba), was named by Berger and his colleagues, following the discovery of two partial skeletons just under two million years old, a juvenile male individual-- Malapa Hominin 1 (MH1)-- and an adult female, Malapa Hominin 2 (MH2). The skeletons are under the custodianship of the University of the Witwatersrand, where they are being kept.

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Separate skeletons suggested to be from different early hominin species are, in fact, from the same species, a team of anthropologists has concluded in a comprehensive analysis of remains first discovered a decade ago.

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Article provides much more detail about the findings than had previously been revealed.

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The ancient people of Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) built their famous ahu monuments near coastal freshwater sources, according to a team of researchers including faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York.

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n science, the "Mona Lisa Effect" refers to the impression that the eyes of the person portrayed in an image seem to follow the viewer as they move in front of the picture.

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The Science of Consciousness (TSC) 2019 is the 26th annual international interdisciplinary conference on fundamental questions and cutting-edge issues connected with conscious experience. https://www.tsc2019-interlaken.ch/

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Dr Vasile Ersek, a senior lecturer in Physical Geography at Northumbria University, writes for The Conversation about the discovery of new evidence of a drought that finished off the Akkadian Empire 4,000 years ago.

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Archaeologists in Iceland have for decades examined the remains of more than 350 graves from the Viking Age. In approximately 150 of these, teeth or bones of horses were found. Geneticists and archaeologists have now examined ancient DNA from 19 horses in such graves, and it turned out that all horses - except one - were male.

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Covered in IFLScience and Smithsonian Magazine

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Nearly five hundred years later, the fleet’s final resting place remains undiscovered. But an international collaboration of underwater archaeologists is conducting the first modern-day search for the scuttled vessels, as well as 16 others that Cortés sank a year later.

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Spectacular flying reptiles armed with long teeth and claws which once dominated the skies have been rediscovered, thanks a palaeontology student’s PhD research.

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Ankylosaurs likely regulated their body temperature with convoluted nasal passages that acted as heat exchangers between air and body, according to a study published December 19, 2018 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jason Bourke from Ohio University, USA, and colleagues.

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Globally archaeological heritage is under threat by looting. The destruction of archaeological sites obliterates the basis for our understanding of ancient cultures and we lose our shared human past. Research at University of Bern shows that satellite data provide a mean to monitor the destruction of archaeological sites. It is now possible to understand activities by looters in remote regions and take measures to protect the sites.

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Scientists have found DNA evidence for the southward migration of the people who spread the so-called Clovis culture of North America. But starting about 9,000 years ago, these people were replaced by a distinct population.

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To eat what grows locally – today’s dietary trend was every day’s practice for prehistoric humans. Studying fossil tooth enamel, German researchers from the Senckenberg research institutes and Goethe University Frankfurt discovered that the early hominins Homo rudolfensis and the so-called Nutcracker Man, Paranthropus boisei, who both lived around 2.4 million years ago in Malawi, were surprisingly adaptable and changed their diet according to the availability of regional resources. Being this versatile contributed to their ability to thrive in different environments. The new findings from southeastern Africa close a significant gap in our knowledge, according to the researchers’ paper just published in "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA".

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A team of archaeologists from UCL have discovered the first empirical evidence of cloves and black pepper to have been found in Sri Lanka, suggesting that exotic spice trade in the region dates back to as early as 600 AD.

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Anthropology professor R. Brian Ferguson's new research counters what many scientists and scholars have long believed: that brutal, bloodthirsty behavior is part of our DNA. Ferguson argues, however, that there is no scientific proof that we have an inherent propensity to take up arms and collectively kill.

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A team of researchers from France, Sweden, and Denmark have identified a new strain of Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that causes plague, in DNA extracted from 5,000-year-old human remains. Their analyses, publishing December 6 in the journal Cell, suggest that this strain is the closest ever identified to the genetic origin of plague.

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Thanks to viral traces in the genomes of ancient people, researchers from South Ural State University were able to determine that man has been suffering from Hepatitis B since at least the Bronze Age.

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New research from Cornell University raises questions about the timing and nature of early interactions between indigenous people and Europeans in North America.

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An ancient, dolphin-like marine reptile resembles its distant relative in more than appearance. Molecular and microstructural analysis of a Stenopterygius ichthyosaur reveals that these animals were most likely warm-blooded, had insulating blubber and used their coloration as camouflage from predators.

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Researchers examined the social composition of raiding parties and their relationship to marriage alliances in an Amazonian tribal society, the Waorani of Ecuador. The Waorani formerly practiced lethal raiding, or small-scale warfare, as part of their social fabric. The anthropologists spoke in detail with tribal members in an attempt to understand what drives individuals to participate in acts of war.

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Corina Kellner of Northern Arizona University will use a Senior Archaeology Award to fund two summers of research in southern Peru to study the development, expansion and collapse of the Nasca and Wari societies during the Andean Middle Horizon period at Huaca del Loro.

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Artifacts of the Bronze Age at the territory of the Southern Urals for several decades have been the object of active research by archaeologists from around the world. Scientists of South Ural State University together with international colleagues from USA and Germany for more than 10 years have been researching a synchronous necropolis (Kamenny Ambar-5)

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Seven University of California, Irvine researchers in areas ranging from engineering and chemistry to sociology and anthropology have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society.

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Supported throughout by the British School at Rome the team - drawn from Newcastle University, UK, the universities of Florence and Amsterdam and the Vatican Museums - have been able to bring the splendour of successive transformations of the ancient city to life.

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Sometimes, there is no “tragedy” in the tragedy of the commons, according to a new analysis that challenges a widely accepted theory. In an analysis of eight case studies from around the world, researchers found that people can successfully share and sustainably use resources, under certain conditions.

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New research disputes a long-held view that our earliest tool-bearing ancestors contributed to the demise of large mammals in Africa over the last several million years. Instead, the researchers argue that long-term environmental change drove the extinctions, mainly in the form of grassland expansion likely caused by falling atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

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New research disputes a long-held view that our earliest tool-bearing ancestors contributed to the demise of large mammals in Africa over the last several million years. Instead, the researchers argue that long-term environmental change drove the extinctions, mainly in the form of grassland expansion likely caused by falling atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

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Twelve pieces of ancient mosaics in Bowling Green State University’s art collection are being packed for their return to the Republic of Turkey.

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A geology professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has discovered that a set of 28 footprints left behind by a reptile-like creature 310 million years ago, are the oldest ever to be found in Grand Canyon National Park.