I was part of the team that found the Homo naledi child’s skull: how we did it
An international team of researchers, led by Professor Lee Berger, a palaeoanthropologist from South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand, has revealed the first partial skull of a Homo naledi child from the Rising Star cave.
A study of skull growth and tooth emergence reveals that timing is everything
Paleoanthropologists have wondered for a long time how and why humans evolved molars that emerge at these specific ages and why those ages are so delayed compared to living apes. New research solves this mystery.
Bone tools from Morocco indicate the production of clothing by 120,000 to 90,000 years ago
The invention of clothing and the development of the tools needed to create it, are milestones in the story of humanity. A new study, supported in part by The Leakey Foundation, provides strong evidence for the manufacture of clothing as far back as 120,000 years ago.
Prehistoric climate change channelled human migrations across Arabia
Researchers, supported in part by The Leakey Foundation, have found that early humans spread into Saudi Arabia multiple times over the past 400,000 years.
Homo longi: Extinct human species that may replace Neanderthals as our closest relatives found in China
In 1933 a mysterious fossil skull was discovered near Harbin City in the Heilongjiang province of north-eastern China. Despite being nearly perfectly preserved – with square eye sockets, thick brow ridges and large teeth – nobody could work out exactly what it was. The skull is much bigger than that of Homo sapiens and other human species – and its brain size is similar to that of our own species. Historical events left it without a secure place of origin or date, until today.