Fossils found in China may add a new branch to the human family tree
Discoveries in the past two decades have added new branches to the human family tree, including species such as the hobbit-like Homo floresiensis and the powerfully built Homo naledi.
A pinkie bone recovered from Denisova Cave in Siberia's Altai Mountains in 2010 also led to the idea of a distinct ancient human population, dubbed the Denisovans, that some people share ancestry with today.
Now, researchers are trying to solve the puzzle presented by a collection of humanlike fossils that have defied explanation for decades.
We are family
Skull fragments, teeth and jaws found at different sites in China have led some researchers to believe they have found the remains of a previously unknown ancient human relative.
The scientists are proposing that the human ancestor, which had an extremely large brain bigger than that of modern humans, be called Homo juluensis.
The designation of a newly identified species seems controversial to some experts.
But researchers Christopher Bae, a professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and his colleague Wu Xiujie, a senior professor from Beijing's Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, believe the species may also include the elusive Denisovans — even though a skull specimen traced to the cave-dwelling people has yet to be found.
Across the universe
Astronomers have been trying to determine what causes mysterious fast radio bursts from space since their discovery in 2007. The flashes release more energy in milliseconds than the sun does in a day.
Now, the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment radio telescope has helped researchers pin down the sources of two recently described bursts.
Scientists traced one to the turbulent, magnetically active region around a rapidly spinning star called a magnetar. The other pulsated from the outskirts of a distant old, dead galaxy no longer producing stars, according to a new study.
The wildly different origin points have led astronomers to believe the flashes can occur in diverse environments. The revelation could help unlock what causes the phenomenon.
Wild kingdom
The brush-tailed bettong could be mistaken for a miniature kangaroo based on its appearance and the pouch that holds its young.
But the tiny marsupial has a not so warm and fuzzy side: It will eject the baby, called a joey, in its pouch and bounce away when threatened by predators. The brutal strategy is necessary for survival in a species that has seen its population decline by 90% — and even disappear for a time from South Australia's Yorke Peninsula.
Conservation efforts are returning the brush-tailed bettong to its native land, where it plays a key ecological role. As the marsupials dig for their primary diet of underground fungi, they aerate the soil and encourage the growth of plants that other animals rely on.
Look up
A Ring doorbell camera captured the moment a meteorite slammed into the front walkway of a home on Canada's Prince Edward Island — where local professor Joe Velaidum had been standing just moments before.
Scientists have now confirmed the specimen, named Charlottetown after the nearby capital city, is indeed a space rock that fell to Earth in July.
While videos have documented meteorite strikes before, it's the first time one has been seen at such close range, complete with sound.
The space rock likely spent millions of years hurtling around our solar system before winding up in its new home: the University of Alberta Meteorite Collection.
Other worlds
Thousands of mounds cover the lowlands of Mars, and they may hold the key to understanding the red planet's past.
The towering features are similar to the buttes and mesas of Monument Valley along the Arizona-Utah border. Ancient water flows that existed 4 billion to 3.8 billion years ago likely eroded and sculpted the formations, according to a new analysis of orbital images.
The mounds include layers of minerals that can reveal the history of water on Mars, and they may be investigated by the European Space Agency's ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover, expected to launch in 2028.
The formations have also provided insight into one of the biggest mysteries on Mars — why the planet has a marked boundary between the soaring highlands of its southern hemisphere and shallow plains in the northern hemisphere.
Curiosities
Expand your knowledge with these intriguing reads:
— Molten metals in Earth's core generate a constantly moving magnetic field, which means the magnetic north pole isn't fixed. It's now closer to Siberia than it was five years ago — and it's continuing to drift toward Russia.
— Camera traps helped scientists spot rare species, including the sun bear and the first recorded sighting in Cambodia of a critically endangered deer species called the large-antlered muntjac, in a virtually unexplored part of the Southeast Asian nation.
— Archaeologists in Denmark unearthed hundreds of disks marked with carvings of the sun. The researchers believe Stone Age farmers buried the 'sun stones' in response to a devastating volcanic eruption nearly 5,000 years ago.
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Yahoo
10-07-2025
- Yahoo
New clues from 2 million-year-old tooth enamel tell us more about an ancient relative of humans
For nearly a century, scientists have been puzzling over fossils from a strange and robust-looking distant relative of early humans: Paranthropus robustus. It walked upright, and was built for heavy chewing with relatively massive jaws, and huge teeth with thick dental enamel. It's thought to have lived between 2.25 million and 1.7 million years ago. Humans today have a diverse array of hominin distant relatives and ancestors from millions of years ago. The South African fossil record ranges from early hominins such as Australopithecus prometheus, A. africanus (Taung child), A. sediba and P. robustus, to early members of the genus Homo (H. erectus/ergaster, H. habilis), to later hominins such as H. naledi and Homo sapiens (humans). Fossils show how these early relatives evolved from as far back as A. africanus, 3.67 million years ago. They also document milestones in evolution, including the transition to walking on two legs, tool making and increased brain development. Ultimately, our species – Homo sapiens – appeared in South Africa 153,000 years ago. Read more: Fossils of P. robustus were first discovered in South Africa in 1938. But crucial questions remained. How much variation was there within the species? Were the size differences related to sex, or did they reflect the presence of multiple species? How was P. robustus related to the other hominins and early Homo? And what, genetically, made it distinct? Until now, answers to these questions have been elusive. As a team of African and European molecular science, chemistry and palaeoanthropology researchers, we wanted to find answers but we couldn't use ancient DNA to help us. Ancient DNA has been a game-changer in studying later hominins like Neanderthals and Denisovans but it doesn't survive well in Africa's climate because of its simple structure. We experienced a breakthrough when we decided to use palaeoproteomics – the analysis of ancient proteins. We extracted these from the enamel of the 2-million-year-old teeth of four P. robustus fossils from Swartkrans Cave in South Africa's Cradle of Humankind. Read more: Luckily, proteins that are millions of years old preserve well because they stick to teeth and bones and are not affected by the warm weather. One of these proteins tells us the biological sex of the fossils. This is how we found that two of the individuals were male and two were female. These findings open a new window into human evolution – one that could reshape how we interpret diversity in our early ancestors by providing some of the oldest human genetic data from Africa. From there, we can understand more about the relationships between the individuals and potentially even whether the fossils come from different species. The protein sequences also revealed other subtle but potentially significant genetic differences. One standout difference was found in a gene which makes enamelin, a critical enamel-forming protein. We found that two of the individuals shared an amino acid with modern and early humans, chimpanzees and gorillas. The other two had an amino acid that among African great apes is, so far, unique to Paranthropus. What's even more interesting is that one of the individuals had both the distinct amino acids. This is the first documented time we can show heterozygosity (a state of having two different versions of a gene) in proteins that are 2 million years old. When studying proteins, specific mutations are thought to indicate different species. We were quite surprised to discover that what we initially thought was a mutation unique to Paranthropus robustus was actually variable within that group – some individuals had it while others did not. Again, this was the first time anyone had observed a protein mutation in ancient proteins (these mutations are usually observed in ancient DNA). Read more: We realised that instead of seeing a single, variable species, we might be looking at a complex evolutionary puzzle of individuals with different ancestries. This shows that combining analyses of morphology (the study of the form and structure of organisms) and the study of ancient proteins, we can create a clearer evolutionary picture of the relationships among these early hominin individuals. However, to confirm that P. robustus fossils have different ancestry, we will need to take samples of tooth enamel protein from more of their teeth. To do this, we plan to sustainably sample more P. robustus from other sites in South Africa where they've been found. Our team was careful to balance scientific innovation with the need to protect irreplaceable heritage. Fossils were sampled minimally, and all work followed South African regulations. We also involved local laboratories in the analysis. Many of the authors were from the African continent. They were instrumental in guiding the research agenda and approach from the early stages of the project. Doing this kind of high-end science on African fossils in Africa is an important step towards transformation and decolonisation of palaeontology. It builds local capacity and ensures that discoveries benefit the regions from which the fossils come. Read more: By combining data on molecules and morphology, our study offers a blueprint for future research – one that could clarify whether early hominins were more or less diverse than we've known. For now, the Paranthropus puzzle just got a little more complex – and a lot more exciting. As palaeoproteomic techniques improve and more fossils are analysed, we can expect more surprises from our ancient relatives. (Jesper V. Olsen, Rebecca R. Ackermann and Enrico Cappellini were also the principal investigators on this project.) This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Palesa P. Madupe, University of Copenhagen; Claire Koenig, University of Copenhagen, and Ioannis Patramanis, University of Copenhagen Read more: How old are South African fossils like the Taung Child? New study offers an answer The fossil skull that rocked the world – 100 years later scientists are grappling with the Taung find's complex colonial legacy 3D technology brings a lost mammalian ancestor back to life This research project was funded by the European Union's Marie Skłodowska-Curie training network 'PUSHH' under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant 'BACKWARD,' and the ERC Proof of Concept Grant under the EU's Horizon Europe program. This research project was funded by the European Union's Marie Skłodowska-Curie training network 'PUSHH' under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. The work at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research was funded in part by a donation from the Novo Nordisk Foundation.
Scientific American
10-07-2025
- Scientific American
Ancient Tooth Proteins Rewrite the Rhino Family Tree—Are Dinosaurs Next?
Researchers have described proteins that they say are among the most ancient ever sequenced. Two teams, which analysed molecules from extinct relatives of rhinos and other large mammals, have pushed back the genetic fossil record to more than 20 million years ago. The studies — out in Nature today — suggest that proteins survive better than researchers thought. This raises the possibility of gleaning molecular insights about evolutionary relationships, biological sex and diet from even older animals — maybe even dinosaurs. 'You're just opening up a whole new set of questions that palaeontologists never thought they could get near,' says Matthew Collins, a palaeoproteomics specialist at the University of Cambridge, UK, and the University of Copenhagen. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. Preserved in teeth The ability to obtain DNA from remains that are thousands of years old has revolutionized biology, revealing previously unknown human groups such as the Denisovans and rewriting the population history of humans and other animals. The oldest sequenced DNA comes from one-million-year-old mammoth bones and two-million-year-old Arctic sediments. Proteins — biological building blocks encoded by the genome — are hardier than DNA and can push researchers' abilities to use molecules to understand ancient species deeper into the past. How far is contentious. In 2007 and 2009, researchers described shards of protein from 68-million-year-old and 80-million-year-old dinosaur fossils, respectively, but many scientists doubt the claims. A 2017 effort to redo the 2009 work was more convincing, says Enrico Cappellini, a biochemist at the University of Copenhagen. Yet it obtained only a limited number of sequences — the list of amino acids that describes a protein's composition — providing only tentative information about evolutionary relationships, he says. He and his colleagues consider the current benchmark for the oldest evolutionarily informative protein ever discovered to be collagen extracted from a 3.5-million-year-old relative of camels from the Canadian arctic. To push this limit further, in one of the two latest studies, Cappellini's team extracted proteins from the enamel — the mineralized outer layer of teeth — of a 23-million-year-old relative of rhinoceroses. The fossil was found on an island in Canada's High Arctic region in 1986 and stored in an Ottawa museum. A 2024 preprint attributed it to a new, extinct rhino species called Epiaceratherium itjilik. Using mass spectrometry — which detects the weight of a protein fragment, allowing its composition to be inferred — the researchers identified partial sequences from 7 enamel proteins, making up at least 251 amino acids in total. An evolutionary tree integrating these sequences with genome data from living rhinos and of their two Ice Age relatives revealed a surprise. The Epiaceratherium sample belonged to a branch of the rhino family tree that split off earlier than any other: between 41 million and 25 million years ago. Previous studies placed this group among modern rhinos. 'It really does change the way we have to think about the evolution of rhinos,' says Ryan Paterson, a biomolecular palaeontologist at the University of Copenhagen, who co-led the study. Next step, dinosaurs Proteins degrade in the heat. The rhino sample that Paterson and his colleagues analysed came from a polar desert where average temperatures are well below freezing, 'the perfect place' for protein preservation, he says. The Turkana Basin in Kenya could be considered one of the worst — and yet it is the source of fossils as old as 18 million years, from which a second team sequenced enamel proteins. Ground surface temperatures there can reach 70 °C, and climate records suggest Turkana Basin has been 'one of the hottest places in the world for a very long time,' says Daniel Green, an isotope geochemist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who co-led the study. The Kenyan enamel-protein sequences — from extinct relatives of rhinos, elephants, hippos and other creatures — fit with classifications made by palaeontologists on the basis of the fossils' bone anatomy. But Green hopes that future studies of ancient proteins from Turkana will be able to solve some evolutionary mysteries, such as the origins of hippos. He and his colleagues also hope that ancient proteins can be obtained from early hominin remains found in Turkana Basin. 'Being able to show that we can get back to 18 million years in this kind of really hot, harsh environment, really shows that the world is open for working on palaeoproteomics,' says Timothy Cleland, a physical scientist at the Smithsonian Museum Science Conservation Institute in Suitland, Maryland, who co-led the Turkana study. He's especially interested in trying to get proteins out of the teeth of dinosaurs, but that will be a challenge, because their enamel is especially thin, he says. The studies are a major technical achievement, says Deng Tao, a palaeontologist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing. But as researchers look even further back in time for ancient proteins, he hopes the results will be able to support meaningful insights into the history of life, 'rather than just a competitive pursuit of the oldest records'. Although the studies focus on evolutionary relationships, Collins is more excited about the prospects of gathering other insights from ancient proteins, including data on biological sex — based on the potential presence of types of enamel protein that are found only in animals with Y chromosomes — and information about where an animal sits in the food chain, written in nitrogen isotopes in amino acids, he says. 'What can you do with it? Everything. It's like, wow!'
Newsweek
08-07-2025
- Newsweek
Newly Released Images Show 3 Early Human Species
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. The BBC has released new images showcasing early human species as part of its upcoming science series, Human. Why It Matters This release is significant for both scientists and the public, providing historically accurate reconstructions that bring to life key moments in our ancestry. What To Know The series, presented by paleoanthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi, will explore the story of human evolution over the past 300,000 years. The series explores how human beings went from being one of many life forms to being the dominant life form on the planet. Al-Shamahi has been able to tell the story thanks to breakthroughs in DNA technology and fossil evidence. The reconstructions offer both educational value and a window into the evolutionary journey that shaped modern humans' origins and survival strategies. The 3D models revealed depict Homo floresiensis, Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthals), and the earliest known Homo sapiens. New images show scientific reconstructions of, on the left, Homo erectus, and, on the right, Homo floresiensis. New images show scientific reconstructions of, on the left, Homo erectus, and, on the right, Homo floresiensis. BBC Studios Early Human Species Brought to Life: Homo erectus lived between 1.89 million and 110,000 years ago, was the first to walk with a modern gait, and likely used fire. Originally native to Africa, they later migrated into Asia and possibly Europe. lived between 1.89 million and 110,000 years ago, was the first to walk with a modern gait, and likely used fire. Originally native to Africa, they later migrated into Asia and possibly Europe. Homo floresiensis , dubbed "the Hobbit" for its small stature, existed from around 700,000 to 50,000 years ago. Their remains have been found only on the Indonesian island of Flores. , dubbed "the Hobbit" for its small stature, existed from around 700,000 to 50,000 years ago. Their remains have been found only on the Indonesian island of Flores. Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthals) emerged about 430,000 years ago and survived until roughly 40,000 years ago. They adapted to cold Eurasian environments and interbred with Homo sapiens. (Neanderthals) emerged about 430,000 years ago and survived until roughly 40,000 years ago. They adapted to cold Eurasian environments and interbred with Homo sapiens. Earliest Homo sapiens fossils originate from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, dating to about 300,000 years ago, showing features that bridge earlier hominins and modern humans. On the left, an image of an early Homo sapien, while on the right, an image shows a Neanderthal. On the left, an image of an early Homo sapien, while on the right, an image shows a Neanderthal. BBC Studios The models were crafted using photogrammetry, fossil data, and the latest advances in archaeological science to depict what these species may have looked like tens of thousands of years ago. The series will feature five episodes: The First of Us, Into the Unknown, Last Humans Standing, Discovering the Americas and A Great Gamble. What People Are Saying Paleoanthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi told the BBC: "For millennia we have been the most dominant form of life on this planet, so it is easy to think that we were always destined for greatness. But a revolution in ancient DNA technology and the latest fossil finds from dig sites across the world are forcing us to accept that our species' story is far more extraordinary than we could ever imagine." What's Next The series will debut on July 14.
