Anthropology

The bonobo Kanzi, who learned to make stone tools, play Minecraft and communicate at the level of a 2-year-old human, has died.

The left hip and leg bones from a young female Paranthropus robustus discovered in South Africa show she was extremely short — and ended up as a leopard's lunch.

A novel genetic model suggests that the ancestors of modern humans came from two distinct populations that split and reconnected during our evolutionary history.

Genetic analysis of skeletons in a mass grave in Mongolia has revealed they were soldiers in the Han-Xiongnu Wars more than two millennia ago.

Fragments of the left side of the skull of a human relative have been discovered in Spain, revealing the face of the oldest human ancestor ever discovered in Western Europe.

Researchers used a novel method of radiocarbon dating to figure out the age of the Lapedo child, who had both Neanderthal and human traits.

The discovery of 1.5 million-year-old bone tools upends what we know about tool manufacturing in East Africa.

Archaeologists were surprised that the skeleton of a person wrapped in heavy chains was female.

A study of the inner ear bones of Neanderthals shows a significant loss of diversity in their shape around 110,000 years ago, suggesting a genetic bottleneck that contributed to Neanderthals' decline.

Twins are pretty rare, accounting for just 3% of births in the U.S. these days. But new research shows that for primates 60 million years ago, giving birth to twins was the norm.