New Family Tree for Humans
	Geometry has changed our family tree. A new computer analysis published in the journal Nature re-drew evolutionary links between extinct humans, apemen and us. The team led by Dr Rolando González-José of the Centro Nacional Patagónico-CONICET, Puerto Madryn, Argentina employed 4 geometric measurements from human and ape fossil skulls, assessing variables like skull roundness and facial retraction. The researchers analyzed 20 skulls bel ... [read more >>]
	15 May 2008, 03:24GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Oldest European: 1.2 Million Years Old
	Millions of years ago, we started our evolution in Africa. Then, at a given moment, we began to colonize the rest of the world. When did humans enter Europe for the first time? In June 2007, archaeologists discovered the oldest European human fossils in the Sima del Elefante Cave, 60-ft (18 m) long, at the Sierra Atapuerca archaeological site in the Burgos Province (northern Spain), just 15 mi (25 km) east of the city of Burgos, not ve ... [read more >>]
	27 March 2008, 03:59GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Skulls Say It: Humans and Neanderthals Split 300,000-400,000 Years Ago
	Our closest evolutionary relative was the Neanderthal man (Homo neanderthalensis). But when did we share a common ancestor? A new research published in the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" shows that gradual changes in human skull size and shape would indicate that, 300,000 to 400,000 years ago, Neanderthals and modern humans separated their evolutionary pathways. All previous estimates were DNA analy ... [read more >>]
	18 March 2008, 03:47GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A 100,000-Year-Old Human Skull from China: Is it a Hybrid?
	Classical theory says Homo sapiens left Africa 50-60,000 years ago, entering Asia. But a new human skull, dated to be 80,000 to 100,000 years old, found in China, could rewrite the human evolution. The shattered fossil has been found in the Henan province, by a team led by Chinese archaeologist Li Zhanyang. While the Chinese report states that the fossil came from a modern human, experts are more tempted to say that the skull belongs to an ... [read more >>]
	21 February 2008, 03:01GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Oldest Human Case of TBC: 500,000 Years Old
	Annually, HIV and pneumonia kill about 2 million people. Tuberculosis is caused by the Koch bacterium and the oldest TBC was found in mummies coming from ancient Egypt and Peru, being thousands of years old. About 150 million people have died of TBC, since 1914. One third of the people carry the Koch bacterium, which spreads through the air and affects all the body, especially the lungs. It induces prolonged coughing, fever, shivering ... [read more >>]
	10 December 2007, 03:30GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Wrist Bone Points to Flores "Hobbit" as a Unique Human Species
	You can imagine the shock of the scientists looking in 2003 for traces of ancient human migration from Asia to Australia to stumble onto a new human species where they least expected: the "hobbit" human species discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores. A vivid debate tried to establish whether the "Flores man" was a dwarfish human species or a diseased Homo sapiens. The grapefruit-size skull made some scientist ... [read more >>]
	24 September 2007, 05:13GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Meet the Oldest Europeans: 1.77 Million Years Old
	Even if we may have separated totally from chimps 4 million years ago, new findings from Georgia reveal that 1.77-million years ago we were just little more than apes. The fossils of three adults and a teenager were dug near the Dmanisi town (Caucasus area) by a team led by David Lordkipanidze of the Georgian National Museum and show a higher variety in early humans than once believed. The bones come with a surprising mixture of primit ... [read more >>]
	20 September 2007, 07:08GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New African Fossils Further Complicate Human Evolution
	We are more than an odd ape. We are odd as a species due to the fact that we are just one human species. Usually, only living fossils and relicts are represented by just one isolated species. Now, a pair of fossils recently found in Kenya show that once more than just one human species lived side by side. It was believed that there was a successive progression: Homo habilis gave rise to Homo erectus, whose African type, H. ergaster, ev ... [read more >>]
	09 August 2007, 03:00GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Europeans Rooted in Asia, Not Africa
	Africa may have been the cradle of the human evolution, but it scarcely shared its human populations with the chilly Europe. The first species of Homo entering Europe appears to have come rather from Asia, than Africa. An international research team has found that Asians played a more important role in the settlement of Europe than Africans did. The team was led by Maria Martinon-Torres of the National Center for the Investiga ... [read more >>]
	07 August 2007, 02:59GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

We All Originated in Africa
	No hanky spanky with the Neanderthals, or ape-men (Homo erectus) in our family tree. A new study shows that we are 100 % an African product. This is the result of a comparison of skulls and DNA of human remains found worldwide. It appears that human species living elsewhere in the world did not contribute to our ancestry. The team led by Andrea Manica at the University of Cambridge, England, compared over 6,000 skulls from more than 10 ... [read more >>]
	19 July 2007, 02:58GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Oldest West European Has Been Found!
	We separated ourselves from chimps 4 million years ago. This took place in Africa. And after that, the rest of the world became a place for African colonists. When did these colonists enter Europe? We do not know for sure, but now Spanish archaelogists have discovered the oldest fossil tooth ever found in Western Europe. The early-human molar was found last Wednesday at the Sierra Atapuerca archaeological site in the Burgos Province (n ... [read more >>]
	03 July 2007, 04:19GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Oldest Homo Sapiens from China Inter-bred with the Ape-Men
	The classical theory says that Homo sapiens emerged about 100,000 years ago in Africa and about 50-60,000 years ago started to spread out of Africa, colonizing the entire planet. Homo sapiens would have wiped out all the pre-existent more archaic Homo species from Eurasia, and this way, our species ensured itself a huge place under the sun. But a new research led by Erik Trinkausa, professor of anthropology at Washington University ... [read more >>]
	03 April 2007, 06:43GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

First Humans Were More Ape-Like than Human-Like
	How did the humans become humans? Were the first humans more ape-like or human-like? Dr. Timothy Bromage, a paleoanthropologist and Adjunct Professor of Biomaterials and of Basic Science and Craniofacial Biology at New York University College of Dentistry Modern, found that our earliest known close ancestor was much more ape-like than previously thought. He made a computer-generated reconstruction revealing that a 1.9 m ... [read more >>]
	26 March 2007, 06:26GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia