Paleontology & Archeology articles

Paleontologists discover most primitive primate skeleton
The origins and earliest branches of primate evolution are clearer and more ancient by 10 million years than previous studies estimated, according to a study featured on the cover of the Jan. 23 print edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Fsu anthropologist confirms 'hobbit' indeed a separate species
After the skeletal remains of an 18,000-year-old, Hobbit-sized human were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, some scientists thought that the specimen must have been a pygmy or a microcephalic — a human with an abnormally small skull.

Huge settlement unearthed at stonehenge
Excavations supported by National Geographic at Durrington Walls in the Stonehenge World Heritage site have revealed an enormous ancient settlement that once housed hundreds of people. Archaeologists, including Bristol University's Dr Joshua Pollard, believe the houses were constructed and occupied by the builders of nearby Stonehenge, the legendary monument on England's Salisbury Plain.

Ancient coin challenges myth of cleopatra's beauty
Antony and Cleopatra were not the handsome General and his beautiful queen Hollywood would have us believe, according to experts at Newcastle University, who have been studying the depiction of the one of history's most tragic romantic couples found on a Roman coin.

Forensic photography brings color back to ancient textiles
Archaeologists are now turning to forensic crime lab techniques to hunt for dyes, paint, and other decoration in prehistoric textiles.

The mysterious case of columbus's silver ore
Silver-bearing ore found at the settlement founded by Christopher Columbus's second expedition was not mined in the Americas, new research reveals.

Archaeologists reveal ancient solar observatory in peru
The 13 Towers of Chankillo are the most outstanding part of a 2300-year-old ceremonial complex excavated by Earthwatch teams in the coastal desert of Peru. A paper in Science by former Earthwatch-supported archaeologist Ivan Ghezzi (Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru) and Clive Ruggles (University of Leicester) reveals that the towers mark the existence of sun cults predating the Inca by nearly two millennia.

Ship excavation sheds light on napoleon's attack on the holy land
Which navy commissioned the boat that sunk off the coast of Acre 200 years ago, which battles was it involved in and how did it end up at the bottom of the sea? The recent findings of marine archaeologists at the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies of the University of Haifa may provide the answers to these questions.

Despite their heft, many dinosaurs had surprisingly tiny genomes
They might be giants, but many dinosaurs apparently had genomes no larger than that of a modern hummingbird.

Alum's phd research uncovers new species of dinosaur
A University of Calgary-trained paleontologist discovered a new species of dinosaur that is considered the link between large-horned dinosaurs and the shorter-horned varieties that followed them.

Researchers find 6,000-year-old fossil evidence
Researchers, including a paleoethnobotanist at the University of Missouri-Columbia, recently found fossil evidence in seven archaeological sites ranging from the Bahamas to present-day Peru that showed people were eating domesticated chili peppers as long as 6,000 years ago. This makes chili peppers one of the oldest domesticated food sources in the Americas.

These legs were made for fighting (not just climbing)
Ape-like human ancestors known as australopiths maintained short legs for 2 million years because a squat physique and stance helped the males fight over access to females, a University of Utah study concludes.

Caribbean extinctions occurred 2m years after apparent cause
Smithsonian scientists and colleagues report a new study that may shake up the way paleontologists think about how environmental change shapes life on Earth. The researchers summarized the environmental, ecological and evolutionary consequences for Caribbean shallow-water marine communities when the Isthmus of Panama was formed. They concluded that extinctions resulting when one ocean became two were delayed by 2 million years.

Fossil from 160,000 years ago shows growth profile similar to modern man
An international team of scientists have found that the oldest member (160,000 years old) of the Homo sapiens species shows a life history profile similar to modern humans. These findings, based on experiments at ESRF, are in contrast to previous studies suggesting that early fossil humans possessed short growth periods, which were more similar to chimpanzees than to living humans.

Paleontologists discover new mammal from mesozoic era
An international team of American and Chinese paleontologists has discovered a new species of mammal that lived 125 million years ago during the Mesozoic Era, in what is now the Hebei Province in China.

Ancient lizard offers evolutionary clues
A University of Alberta paleontologist has helped discover the existence of a 95 million-year-old snakelike marine animal - a finding that provides not only the earliest example of limb-loss in lizards but the first example of limb-loss in an aquatic lizard.

Man's earliest direct ancestors looked more apelike than previously believed
Modern man's earliest known close ancestor was significantly more apelike than previously believed, a New York University College of Dentistry professor has found.

China's earliest modern human
Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing have been studying a 40,000-year-old early modern human skeleton found in China and have determined that the "out of Africa" dispersal of modern humans may not have been as simple as once thought.

Seats helped ancient greeks hear from back row
As the ancient Greeks were placing the last few stones on the magnificent theater at Epidaurus in the fourth century B.C., they couldn't have known that they had unwittingly created a sophisticated acoustic filter. But when audiences in the back row were able to hear music and voices with amazing clarity (well before any theater had the luxury of a sound system), the Greeks must have known that they had done something very right because they made many attempts to duplicate Epidaurus' design, but never with the same success.

New archaeological findings on political power in peru
A team from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the University of Almería has completed its second part of the "Proyecto La Puntilla", an archaeological expedition to the Peruvian province of Nazca, where last year it discovered a new type of construction.