Sentences with phrase «ancient hominins»

The «Cradle of Humankind» — a Unesco World Heritage Site located approximately 30 miles north of Johannesburg, South Africa — is famous for its rich and diverse deposits of ancient hominin fossils.

If they eventually find Gc - Cs in ancient hominin fossils as well, the researchers say it could open up all kinds of interesting possibilities.

Previous studies have suggested that two genes, EPAS1 (inherited from ancient hominins known as Denisovans) and ELGN1, play roles in reducing hemoglobin and boosting oxygen use.

The Rosetta stone was required to unlock the mysteries of hieroglyphics from a mere 5,000 years ago and the world is no closer to understanding the hash marks left by ancient hominins hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Harnessing fire for light, warmth, and cooking was a key event in hominin prehistory — but the smoke could have been disastrous for Neandertals and other ancient hominins in terms of survival and reproduction, New Scientist reports.

Recent genetic research has resolved the question of whether or not modern humans interbred with other ancient hominins — they definitely did.

Dr. Harmand, the lead author, says that the Lomekwi 3 artifacts show that at least one group of ancient hominin started intentionally «knapping» stones — breaking off pieces with quick, hard strikes from another stone — to make sharp tools long before previously thought.

The study helps settle a long - standing debate about how quickly our ancestors developed a humanlike gait, and shows that ancient hominins didn't have to sacrifice climbing agility to walk upright efficiently.

Analyzing proteins within a fossil requires destroying a piece of the specimen, something unthinkable for precious ancient hominin remains.

The researchers then looked specifically for ancient hominin DNA in the samples.

Nine samples from four archaeological sites contained enough ancient hominin DNA for further analyses: Eight sediment samples contained Neandertal mitochondrial DNA from either one or multiple individuals, while one sample contained Denisovan DNA.

«This new work is important because for the first time it unambiguously demonstrates a third interbreeding [of modern with ancient hominins],» says David Reich of Harvard Medical School in Boston.

The date also means it was made two to three hundred thousand years before our own species evolved, by a more ancient hominin, Homo erectus.

That's why the most significant applications for ZooMS may be to identify fragmentary fossils and to learn more about ancient hominins» environments — especially the ones they created.

DNA extracted from the bone belongs to a mysterious ancient hominin that last shared an ancestor with our species and Neanderthals about a million years ago.

Each summer, archaeologist Sarah Hlubik treks rutted dirt tracks to a dry riverbed in Kenya, following, approximately, in the footsteps of ancient hominins who camped there about 1.6 million years ago.

«We pick up little fractions of a current» of ancient hominin movements, Foley says.

A new cache of hobbit - like remains uncovered on the island of Flores answers at least some questions in the decade - long quest to understand the identity and origins of this tiny ancient hominin.

Some researchers argue that reconstructions influence how scientists view ancient hominins and interpret their behavior.

This has never been seen before in such a primitive human, and could have big implications for understanding the origins of modern human behaviour (see «Did ancient hominins bury their dead?

«While the precise implications of the CI eruption for cultures and livelihoods are best understood in the context of archaeological data sets,» write Black and colleagues, the results of their study quantitatively describe the magnitude and distribution of the volcanic cooling and acid deposition that ancient hominin communities experienced coincident with the final decline of the Neanderthals.

«Once we've refined our technique to the point that we need smaller sample amounts and are able to obtain ancient hominin fossils from Africa, we may eventually be able to classify them into two groups — those that have Gc - CS and those that do not.

«We therefore decided to investigate whether hominin DNA may survive in sediments at archaeological sites known to have been occupied by ancient hominins.»

Now, the Lomekwi artifacts show that those ideas are correct and at least one group of ancient hominin started intentionally knapping stones to make tools long before previously thought.

Knowing that researchers need to make a very strong case before they are given precious ancient hominin fossil samples, even for DNA analysis, Leakey recommended that the researchers first prove their method by detecting Gc - CS in even older animal fossils.

Earlier studies have shown that one to six percent of modern Eurasian genomes were inherited from ancient hominins, such as Neanderthal or Denisovans.

Ancient hominin fossils are rare, and those from early members of our own genus, Homo, are rarer still.

They relied on vast amounts of data available on present - day people from the 1000 Genomes Project together with the genome sequences of ancient hominins.

Using the latest DNA filtering techniques, researchers sifted through trillions of genetic fragments from plants, other mammals and modern humans to pinpoint the ancient hominin sequences.

In the new study, Pontzer and Kozma also calculated the range of hip and leg extensions of three species of ancient hominins.

Ferring suggests that ancient hominins might have been following their food source — animals.

The collection includes stone tools and other artifacts, as well as fossilized bones of animals and ancient hominins, including the Neandertal bones that formed part of the sample used in three recent studies of Neandertal DNA.

He would not be surprised if the genome of yet another ancient hominin comes to light in our DNA.

Instead, they evolved separately from an ancient hominin and then, about 30,000 years ago, disappeared.

An ancient hominin male and several children were foraging along an estuary in Norfolk almost a million years ago

They found the ancient hominin's foot shared many features with the modern human foot, suggesting that it was well - suited for standing and walking on two feet.

Many researchers expected these ancient hominins to represent the common ancestor of both Neandertals and modern humans — a species called Homo heidelbergensis, which lived about 500,000 to more than 1 million years ago.

Our ancestors mated with another species of ancient hominins, the Denisovans, on at least two occasions.

All the suggested anatomical and physiological adaptations can be explained by other hypotheses, which fit much better with what we actually know about the ecology of ancient hominins.

DNA analysis gives clues to how the ancient hominin's population split and how they interacted with modern humans.

«For me personally, I think Africa is still a strong contender for the split between chimpanzees, bonobos and whatever ends up with us, ancient hominins, but they are certainly putting forward a case in these two papers that is well worth archaeologists, paleoanthropologists, experts in the field, looking again at the record and thinking of if the African story does still stack up.»

In - depth analysis of the Neanderthal Y chromosome offers insights into the ancient hominins» split with modern humans.

This adaptation allowed the ancient hominin to settle into Europe and the Middle East.

«We therefore decided to investigate whether hominin DNA may survive in sediments at archaeological sites known to have been occupied by ancient hominins,» said lead researcher Matthias Meyer from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

An international group of researchers sequenced a complete genome from one of the ancient hominins (human - like creatures), based on nuclear DNA extracted from a finger bone.

The fossils of the creature, named after the Rising Star cave system in which they were discovered — «naledi» means «star» in the local Sesotho language — paint the picture of an ancient hominin that possessed a mixture of human and ape - like traits.

When viewed in combination with the 1976 discovery — in which three sets of footprints were discovered — the new find suggests that ancient hominins may have lived in social groups similar to gorillas, where a single dominant male mates and is accompanied by several females and their offspring.

How these ancient hominins would have gotten to Indonesia from Africa is, of course, a mystery.

The tracks are thought to have been made when the ancient hominins walked across wet volcanic ash.

«But if we found more examples of hominin fossils that had these crests then this approach would be helpful in understanding how these ancient hominins structured their societies and engaged with each other,» he says.