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(Reuters) - The incorporation of meat into the diet was a milestone for the human evolutionary lineage, a potential catalyst for advances such as increased brain size. But scientists have struggled to ...

The species Australopithecus afarensis inhabited East Africa more than three million years ago, and occupies a key position in the hominin family tree, as it is widely accepted to be ancestral to all ...

A set of footprints found in the east African country of Tanzania from millions of years ago have long been thought to belong to a bear, but researchers have discovered they actually belonged to an ...

A recent study reveals we have a long-lost relative which hung out with our more famous apelike ancestors about three million years ago. It turns out the human family tree is more complicated than we ...

Natural history is a difficult thing to conceptualize. You’ve got eons of undocumented progress, like the evolution of many species. Take, for example, the Australopithecus, an ancient great ape ...

Ancient human relatives ran on two legs, like modern humans, but at a much slower pace, suggest 3D computer simulations of Australopithecus afarensis 1 — a small hominin that lived more than three ...

With long limbs and a big brain, the ancient hominin Australopithecus afarensis is among the most human-like of our potential ancestors. Exactly how A. afarensis combined human- and ape-like traits ...

The high-security fossil vault at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), in Johannesburg, contains treasure more precious than the gold that paid for the university’s establishment. It is the ...

Scientists have long been able to measure and analyze the fossil skulls of our ancient ancestors to estimate brain volume and growth. The question of how these ancient brains compare to modern human ...

A fossilized foot discovered in Ethiopia and left unclassified for over a decade has now been linked to a little-known human relative that lived alongside Australopithecus afarensis, the species of ...