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Evolution

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Some of the footprints of two humans pieces found side by side in Kenya.

Footprints show two human species crossed paths 1.5 million years ago

One had an ape-like big toe, the other a high arch. One was a juvenile, another had a stiff foot.

  • Will Dunham

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Left: Professor Mike Archer with the preserved pub that inspired his de-extinction program in 2000. Right: Dr Anna Gillespie recovering a thylacine fossil from a boulder using acetic acid.

Scientists dissolved a boulder in acid – and a thylacine jumped out

The bone-crushing fossilised jaws were one of three Tasmanian tiger ancestors uncovered by palaeontologists, amid a contentious effort to resurrect the marsupial carnivore.

  • Angus Dalton
The recreated head of Shanidar Z, based on 3D scans of the reconstructed skull, made by the Kennis brothers for the Netflix documentary Secrets of the Neanderthals.

No more ‘Homo stupidus’: Why Neanderthals are getting a makeover

They were shrewd, complex and creative, and we shared the planet with them (and other types of humans) for thousands of years. So why did the Neanderthals die out and not us?

  • Angus Holland
Asteroid heading to earth GIF

Asteroid that killed dinosaurs was a ‘big bang’ for bird evolution

Australian scientists have helped redraw the “tree of life” for almost every bird on earth, with a study finding their ancestors emerged after the dinosaurs disappeared.

  • Angus Dalton
A new study has found “morningness” has a lot to do with DNA.

Are you a morning person? You may be a Neanderthal descendant

Using artificial intelligence to analyse genetic variants, researchers have found some humans could have obtained their circadian rhythm from their ancestors.

  • Adela Suliman
Sir David Attenborough described it as “one of the greatest predators the world has ever seen”.

‘T-Rex of the sea’ had a two-metre-long skull

The 150-million-year-old fossil was found in Dorset, England. Sir David Attenborough said it was “one of the greatest predators the world has ever seen”.

  • Alex Barton
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An illustration of the Cretaceous Paleogene extinction event.

Apocalyptic dust plume killed off the dinosaurs in spring, says study

Scientists have known for some time that a giant asteroid smashed into Earth causing mass extinctions. But precisely how it happened was until now not understood.

  • Carolyn Y. Johnson
Extremophiles are usually bacteria, but you could say the leaf-eared mouse – found far above the normal mammalian altitude threshold – has joined the ranks of microbes that live in permafrost and radioactive waste.

Life on Mars? This tiny South American mouse might hold the answer

Mummified mice found on mountain summits on the Chile-Argentina border have re-defined what we know about the limits of mammals – and they may help the search for life on other planets.

  • Angus Dalton
Human footprints infilled with white gypsum sand at the White Sands National Park in New Mexico.

Pollen count helps prove humans left footprints in the Americas much earlier than believed

The footprints were discovered at the edge of an ancient lakebed in White Sands National Park and date back to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago.

  • Christina Larson
A new face and partial brain case of Anadoluvius turkae – a find that may have changed how we understand humanity to have evolved.

8.7-million-year-old skull suggests we didn’t evolve in Africa after all

An intriguing find is challenging the long-standing assumption that humans evolved in Africa and instead suggests that human origins may actually lie in Europe.

  • Sarah Knapton

Original URL: https://www.watoday.com.au/topic/evolution-jlm