Research Highlight |
Featured
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Nature Podcast |
Podcast: Nature’s 2019 PhD survey, and older women in sci-fi novels
Listen to the latest science updates, brought to you by Nick Howe and Shamini Bundell.
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Editorial |
Egypt stands to benefit from sharing its latest discoveries with all Egyptologists
When the time is right, the country should consider inviting researchers from around the world to study the latest finds from its ancient past.
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News |
Rare mummified lions add to Egyptology buzz
Ancient cats come hot on the heels of a stunning human-coffin find as Egypt keeps research on the artefacts to itself, for now.
- Antoaneta Roussi
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Research Highlight |
Buried children wore headgear made from other youngsters’ skulls
Strange headpieces might have been protection for the souls of those who died young.
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Research Highlight |
A spy plane’s declassified snapshots reveal an ancient city’s size
The city of Ur, located in modern-day Iraq, might at some points have covered more than eight times as much ground as previously estimated.
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Article |
Enamel proteome shows that Gigantopithecus was an early diverging pongine
The enamel proteome from a 1.9-million-year-old Gigantopithecus tooth shows that the Gigantopithecus and Pongo (orangutan) lineages diverged 12–10 million years ago.
- Frido Welker
- , Jazmín Ramos-Madrigal
- & Enrico Cappellini
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Article |
A new Miocene ape and locomotion in the ancestor of great apes and humans
Danuvius guggenmosi moved using extended limb clambering, thus combining adaptations of bipeds and suspensory apes and providing evidence of the evolution of bipedalism and suspension climbing in the common ancestor of great apes and humans.
- Madelaine Böhme
- , Nikolai Spassov
- & David R. Begun
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News & Views |
How Australopithecus provided insight into human evolution
In 1925, a Nature paper reported an African fossil of a previously unknown genus called Australopithecus. This finding revolutionized ideas about early human evolution after human ancestors and apes split on the evolutionary tree.
- Dean Falk
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News |
Four-thousand-year-old genomes show deep roots of social inequality
Genealogies gleaned from ancient human DNA are set to transform archaeology.
- Ewen Callaway
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Career Q&A |
Q&A: gender, race and field trips in South African anthropology
Nomawethu Hlazo, a PhD student in archaeology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, speaks to Nature about her experiences.
- Linda Nordling
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News & Views |
Early Europeans bottle-fed babies with animal milk
The foods used to supplement or replace breast milk in infants’ diets in prehistoric times aren’t fully understood. The finding that ancient feeding vessels from Europe had residues of animal milk offers a clue.
- Siân E. Halcrow
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Letter |
Milk of ruminants in ceramic baby bottles from prehistoric child graves
Small, spouted vessels found in Bronze and Iron Age graves of infants in Bavaria were used to feed the milk of domesticated animals to infants.
- J. Dunne
- , K. Rebay-Salisbury
- & R. P. Evershed
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News |
First portrait of mysterious Denisovans drawn from DNA
Scientists analysed chemical changes to the ancient humans’ DNA to reveal broad, Neanderthal-like facial features.
- Ewen Callaway
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Books & Arts |
Climate and crisis: what survives
Kathleen Jamie’s lens on human and planetary crossroads bends time and illuminates place, finds Barbara Kiser.
- Barbara Kiser
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News |
Lost Denisovan bone reveals surprisingly human-like finger
Photos of missing fossil show these ancient hominins had slimmer digits than their Neanderthal relatives.
- Ewen Callaway
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News |
Ancient stone tools hint at settlers’ epic trek to North America
16,000-year-old artefacts discovered in Idaho could be the oldest ever found on the continent.
- Ewen Callaway
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Comment |
Use ancient remains more wisely
Researchers rushing to apply powerful sequencing techniques to ancient-human remains must think harder about safeguarding, urge Keolu Fox and John Hawks.
- Keolu Fox
- & John Hawks
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News & Views |
Elusive cranium of early hominin found
A 3.8-million-year-old hominin fossil reveals what the cranium of the oldest known Australopithecus species looked like, casting doubt on assumptions about how these ancient relatives of humans evolved.
- Fred Spoor
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Nature Podcast |
Podcast: Carbon-based computing, and depleting ancient-human genomes
Listen to the latest from the world of science, with Shamini Bundell and Benjamin Thompson.
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Research Highlight |
Trophy heads reveal the Inca Empire’s reign of terror
Skulls found in an ancient settlement in the Andes Mountains were altered for display.
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Research Highlight |
Did the mysterious Denisovans make these prehistoric etchings?
Archaeologists have turned up inscribed bones from a site in northern China previously linked to the ancient hominins.
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Research Highlight |
Death as a human sacrifice awaited some travellers to a Mayan city
People whose remains were consigned to a sinkhole in Mexico might have journeyed more than 1,000 kilometres to the site.
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News Feature |
The battle to rebuild centuries of science after an epic inferno
Nearly a year after flames consumed Brazil’s National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, researchers are struggling to revive their work and resume their lives.
- Emiliano Rodríguez Mega
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Letter |
Elemental signatures of Australopithecus africanus teeth reveal seasonal dietary stress
Trace-element analysis of teeth from the hominin Australopithecus africanus, dated to 2.6–2.1 million years ago, sheds light on the weaning sequence of this species and its responses to seasonal food scarcity
- Renaud Joannes-Boyau
- , Justin W. Adams
- & Luca Fiorenza
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News & Views |
An early dispersal of modern humans from Africa to Greece
Analysis of two fossils from a Greek cave has shed light on early hominins in Eurasia. One fossil is the earliest known specimen of Homo sapiens found outside Africa; the other is a Neanderthal who lived 40,000 years later.
- Eric Delson
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Article |
Apidima Cave fossils provide earliest evidence of Homo sapiens in Eurasia
Detailed comparative analyses of two fossil crania from Apidima Cave, Greece, indicate that two late Middle Pleistocene human groups were present at this site; first an early Homo sapiens population followed by a Neanderthal population.
- Katerina Harvati
- , Carolin Röding
- & Mirsini Kouloukoussa
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Correspondence |
Preserve Mount Vesuvius history in digging out Pompeii’s
- Roberto Scandone
- , Lisetta Giacomelli
- & Christopher Kilburn
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Books & Arts |
Adventures of a space archaeologist
A personal take on panning out to see the past both grips and frustrates Jo Marchant.
- Jo Marchant
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Nature Podcast |
Podcast: Callused feet, and protein-based archaeology
Hear the latest science news, brought to you by Benjamin Thompson and Shamini Bundell.
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News Feature |
Move over, DNA: ancient proteins are starting to reveal humanity’s history
Proteins dating back more than one million years have been extracted from some fossils, and could help to answer some difficult questions about archaic humans.
- Matthew Warren
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Letter |
Foot callus thickness does not trade off protection for tactile sensitivity during walking
People who frequently walk barefoot have thicker and harder calluses than those who typically use footwear; however, in contrast to shoes, callus thickness does not trade-off protection for the ability to perceive tactile stimuli during walking.
- Nicholas B. Holowka
- , Bert Wynands
- & Daniel E. Lieberman
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Career Column |
How adapting to research setbacks can pave the way to greater outcomes
Skeletal biologist Justyna Miszkiewicz says that the disappointments she encountered during her PhD were as valuable as her successes.
- Justyna Miszkiewicz
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Books & Arts |
Radiocarbon revolution: the story of an isotope
Chris Turney applauds a book on carbon-14 and its key applications in archaeology, climatology and oceanography.
- Chris Turney
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Research Highlight |
This artificial island was built by farmers more than five millennia ago
Rocky outposts are much older than previously supposed and might have served ritual purposes.
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Research Highlight |
Mystery of the ‘mini bagels’ found in rubble at ancient fort
Odd chunks of dough might have had a ceremonial purpose.
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Article |
The population history of northeastern Siberia since the Pleistocene
Analyses of 34 ancient genomes from northeastern Siberia, dating to between 31,000 and 600 years ago, reveal at least three major migration events in the late Pleistocene population history of the region.
- Martin Sikora
- , Vladimir V. Pitulko
- & Eske Willerslev
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Research Highlight |
Ancient poos show intestinal benefits of life in a crowded town
Residents of a sprawling prehistoric settlement suffered from whipworm but escaped other common parasites.
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Research Highlight |
Kit for consuming hallucinogenic plants found in ancient tomb
Bag containing traces of coca leaves and other mind-bending plants was buried with a South American shaman.
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Letter |
A late Middle Pleistocene Denisovan mandible from the Tibetan Plateau
Fossil evidence indicates that Denisovans occupied the Tibetan Plateau in the Middle Pleistocene epoch and successfully adapted to this high-altitude hypoxic environments long before the regional arrival of modern Homo sapiens.
- Fahu Chen
- , Frido Welker
- & Jean-Jacques Hublin
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Research Highlight |
A viper’s tooth in ancient human poo hints at snake-eating rituals
Prehistoric faeces found in Texas includes scales, bones and a fang.
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Toolbox |
A simple approach to dating bones
Forensic anthropologist Ann Ross describes the techniques she uses to determine the age of human skeletons.
- Jeffrey M. Perkel
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Editorial |
Working with marginalized groups demands time and respect — and researchers must give both
All those in the research enterprise must support efforts to conduct just, equitable and inclusive research.
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News Feature |
Indigenous groups look to ancient DNA to bring their ancestors home
Local communities and geneticists are working together to sequence DNA from remains that were taken from their homelands decades ago.
- Nicky Phillips
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Nature Video |
These bones belong to a new species of human
The remains, found on an island in the Philippines, suggest that Homo luzonensis was under 1.2 metres tall.
- Charlotte Stoddart
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News & Views |
Previously unknown human species found in Asia raises questions about early hominin dispersals from Africa
Excavations in southeast Asia have unearthed a previously unreported hominin species named Homo luzonensis. The discovery has implications for ideas about early hominin evolution and dispersal from Africa.
- Matthew W. Tocheri
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News |
Unknown human relative discovered in Philippine cave
Bone fragments reveal a short-statured species — which researchers have named Homo luzonensis — that lived more than 50,000 years ago.
- Nic Fleming
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Article |
A new species of Homo from the Late Pleistocene of the Philippines
Homo luzonensis, a new species of Homo from the Callao Cave in the Philippines from the Late Pleistocene epoch, is described.
- Florent Détroit
- , Armand Salvador Mijares
- & Philip J. Piper
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Research Highlight |
The Inca bedecked their sacrificial guinea pigs with earrings
Finding confirms historic reports that the rodents were killed en masse at South American ceremonies.
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Research Highlight |
Sunken treasures in Andean lake show an empire’s quest for control
Artefacts found in Lake Titicaca include bones of a six-month-old llama killed in an ancient rite.