Dated to about 1.5 million years ago, the bones display a long robust thumb, short fingers and a mobile little finger, hinting at tool use and precision grips beyond the genus Homo.

In a 1970 National Geographic feature, paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey—son of Louis and Mary Leakey—recounted his ...

Hand fossils unearthed in Kenya reveal that an extinct human relative called Paranthropus boisei had unexpected dexterity and gorilla-like strength.

Ancient, fossilized teeth, uncovered during a decades-long archaeology project in northeastern Ethiopia, indicate that two different kinds of hominins, or human ancestors, lived in the same place ...

(Reuters) - The incorporation of meat into the diet was a milestone for the human evolutionary lineage, a potential catalyst for advances such as increased brain size. But scientists have struggled to ...

Sophisticated scanning technology is revealing intriguing secrets about Little Foot, the remarkable fossil of an early human forerunner that inhabited South Africa 3.67 million years ago during a ...

The earth doesn’t give up its secrets easily – not even in the “Cradle of Humankind” in South Africa, where a wealth of fossils relating to human evolution have been found. For decades, scientists ...

Fossils of our earliest ancestors in the "cradle of humankind" are a million years older than previously thought, according to new research. The Sterkfontein Caves in Johannesburg, South Africa, ...

A new study led by paleoanthropologists reveals that Lucy's species Australopithecus afarensis had an ape-like brain. However, the protracted brain growth suggests that -- as is the case in humans -- ...

Archaeologists uncovered teeth from an ancient human ancestor in Ethiopia's Afar Region. - Amy Rector/Virginia Commonwealth University Ancient, fossilized teeth, uncovered during a decades-long ...