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We are currently the only human species alive, but as recently as 24,000 years ago another one walked the earth — the Neanderthals. These extinct humans were the closest relatives we had, and tantalizing new hints from researchers suggest that we might have been intimately close indeed. The mystery of whether Neanderthals and us had sex might be solved if the entire Neanderthal genome is reported soon as expected. The matter of why they died and we succeeded, however, remains an open question. Maybe not nasty and brutish, but still short Why did Neanderthals go extinct? Roughly 30,000 years ago,...

Humans are unusual animals by any stretch of the imagination, ones that have changed the face of the world around us. What makes us so special when compared to the rest of the animal kingdom? Some things we take completely for granted might surprise you. -

SEDIMENT cores from a small Arctic lake in Canada stretching back 200,000 years show unprecedented gains in global warming since 1950, indicating human activity is the likely cause. "The past few decades have been unique in the past 200,000 years in terms of the changes we see in the biology and chemistry recorded in the cores,'' University of Colorado glaciologist Yarrow Axford said. "We see clear evidence for warming in one of the most remote places on Earth at a time when the Arctic should be cooling because of natural processes." Mr Axford is the chief author of the study...

To the Editor: The Naval Health Research Center serves as the Navy hub for the Department of Defense's Global Emerging Infections Surveillance and Response System (GEIS), in which it monitors influenza-like illness among recruit trainees of all military services, military dependents, and crew members of large Navy ships (population, >1000). The center works in collaboration with the Border Infectious Disease Surveillance Project of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which monitors populations located on the border between California and Mexico. The first two human cases of novel swine-origin influenza A (H1N1) virus (S-OIV), known as swine flu, in...

VIENNA (AFP) – They can make fabric resistant to stains, improve the taste of food and help drug research, but nanoparticles could also pose a danger to human health, experts warned Wednesday. Susanne Stark, of the Consumer Information Association, told a seminar in the Austrian city of Salzburg that companies should be forced to indicate on labels whether a product contains the tiny particles. "There are more questions than answers on the effects of nanoparticles" on human health, the chemist said. Cosmetic and food products should indicate whether their products contain nanoparticles by 2012, she said. Nanoparticles, measuring no more...

When we daydream about the future, we tend to focus on the fabulous belongings we're going to have. Jet packs, flying cars, weapons to kill aliens, cell phones that make today's sleek models look clunky -- you name it, we're going to have it. We don't tend to focus, however, on who we'll be in the future. Most of us probably picture ourselves exactly the same, though maybe thinner, as surely we'll all have robot personal trainers by then. While we see the world's technology evolving to meet our needs, we may not think about how we ourselves might be...

Cat owners may have suspected as much, but it seems our feline friends have found a way to manipulate us humans. Researchers at the University of Sussex have discovered that cats use a "soliciting purr" to overpower their owners and garner attention and food. Unlike regular purring, this sound incorporates a "cry", with a similar frequency to a human baby's. The team said cats have "tapped into" a human bias - producing a sound that humans find very difficult to ignore.

If you've ever wondered who's in control, you or your cat, a new study points to the obvious. It's your cat. Household cats exercise this control with a certain type of urgent-sounding, high-pitched meow, according to the findings. This meow is actually a purr mixed with a high-pitched cry. While people usually think of cat purring as a sign of happiness, some cats make this purr-cry sound when they want to be fed. The study showed that humans find these mixed calls annoying and difficult to ignore. "The embedding of a cry within a call that we normally associate with...

A fossil discovery bears marks of butchering similar to those made when cutting up a deerOne of science's most puzzling mysteries - the disappearance of the Neanderthals - may have been solved. Modern humans ate them, says a leading fossil expert. The controversial suggestion follows publication of a study in the Journal of Anthropological Sciences about a Neanderthal jawbone apparently butchered by modern humans. Now the leader of the research team says he believes the flesh had been eaten by humans, while its teeth may have been used to make a necklace.

snip It's even conceivable, he said, that our genes eventually will change enough to create an entirely new human species, one no longer able to breed with our own species, Homo sapiens. "Someday in the far distant future, enough genetic changes might have occurred so that future populations could not interbreed with the current one,'' Sussman said in an e-mail message. snip It's also the topic of a new book, "The 10,000 Year Explosion,'' by anthropologists Henry Harpending and Gregory Cochran of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City. "For most of the last century, the received wisdom in the...

Skippy surprises scientists by Carl Wieland 20 January 2009 Feeling jumpy? It may not be from what you think. Researchers at Australia’s government-backed Centre of Excellence for Kangaroo Genomics have mapped the genetic code of these marsupials, and were surprised at the amazing similarity to that of humans...

Los Angeles, CA – A new study in the journal Personal Relationships reveals that women prefer mates who are recognized by their peers for their skills, abilities, and achievements, while not preferring men who use coercive tactics to subordinate their rivals. Indeed, women found dominance strategies of the latter type to be attractive primarily when men used them in the context of male-male athletic competitions. Jeffrey K. Snyder, Lee A. Kirkpatrick, and H. Clark Barrett conducted three studies with college women at two U.S. universities. Participants evaluated hypothetical potential mates described in written vignettes. The studies were designed to examine...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- California's utilities, refineries and large factories must transform their operations to cut greenhouse gas emissions as part of a new climate plan before state regulators. On Thursday, the California Air Resources Board was expected to adopt what would be the nation's most sweeping global warming plan, outlining for the first time how individuals and businesses would meet a landmark 2006 law that made the state a leader on global climate change. It would hold California's worst polluters accountable for the heat-trapping emissions they produce _ transforming how people travel, utilities generate power and businesses use electricity. At...

NASA and other spaceflight programs worldwide should focus on putting people on Mars, not the moon, an advocacy group for space exploration said in a new plan announced today. "The U.S. landed humans on the Moon nearly 40 years ago," said Louis Friedman, executive director of The Planetary Society. "Returning to the moon has not sufficiently excited the public and will require resources that will be badly needed elsewhere in the space program."

The latest request from the Pentagon jars the senses. At least, it did mine. They are looking for contractors to provide a "Multi-Robot Pursuit System" that will let packs of robots "search for and detect a non-cooperative human". One thing that really bugs defence chiefs is having their troops diverted from other duties to control robots. So having a pack of them controlled by one person makes logistical sense. But I'm concerned about where this technology will end up. Given that iRobot last year struck a deal with Taser International to mount stun weapons on its military robots, how long...

Ore. Discovery Challenges Beliefs About First Humans Until recently, most scientists believed that the first humans came to the Americas 13,000 years ago. But new archaeological findings from a cave in Oregon are challenging that assumption. Lee Hochberg of Oregon Public Television reports on the controversial discovery. LEE HOCHBERG, NewsHour correspondent: What archaeologist Dennis Jenkins found in the Paisley Caves in south central Oregon may turn on its head the theory of how and when the first people came to North America. Many scientists believe humans first came to this continent 13,000 years ago across a land bridge from Asia...

Humans Wore Shoes 40,000 Years Ago, Fossil SuggestsScott Norris for National Geographic NewsJuly 1, 2008 Humans were wearing shoes at least 10,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to a new study. The evidence comes from a 40,000-year-old human fossil with delicate toe bones indicative of habitual shoe-wearing, experts say. A previous study of anatomical changes in toe bone structure had dated the use of shoes to about 30,000 years ago. Now the dainty-toed fossil from China suggests that at least some humans were sporting protective footwear 10,000 years further back, during a time when both modern humans and Neandertals...

As a canine, there’s something satisfying about watching this video. I have to say, these are folks that see the water bowl as half full instead of half empty. Maybe there’s hope for humanity after all. Let the games begin…Click more to watch the video....http://boknowsonline.com/2008/02/29/doody-olympians/

First Shoes Worn 40,000 Years Ago Maggie Koerth-Baker Special to LiveScience LiveScience.com Thu Jun 5, 9:05 AM ET Humans started wearing shoes about 40,000 years ago, much earlier than previously thought, new anthropological research suggests. As any good clothes horse knows, the right outfit speaks volumes about the person wearing it. Now, anthropologists are tapping into that knowledge base, looking for the physical changes caused by wearing shoes to figure out when footwear first became fashionable. Turns out, clothes really do make the man (and the woman), at least when it comes to feet. That's because wearing shoes changes the...

Humans May Have Come To New Zealand Later Than ThoughtHumans Arrived In New Zealand 1,000 Years Later Than Believed, New Study Finds WELLINGTON, New Zealand, Jun. 3, 2008 (AP) Radiocarbon dating of rat bones and rat-gnawed seeds reinforces a theory that human settlers did not arrive in New Zealand until 1300 A.D. _ about 1,000 years later than some scientists believe, according to a study released Tuesday. The first settlement date "has been highly debated for decades," said Dr. Janet Wilmshurst, a New Zealander who led the international team of researchers in the four-year study. The team carbon dated rat...

Did Humans Colonize the World by Boat?Research suggests our ancestors traveled the oceans 70,000 years ago. by Heather Pringle Jon Erlandson shakes out what appears to be a miniature evergreen from a clear ziplock bag and holds it out for me to examine. As one of the world’s leading authorities on ancient seafaring, he has devoted much of his career to hunting down hard evidence of ancient human migrations, searching for something most archaeologists long thought a figment: Ice Age mariners. On this drizzly late-fall afternoon in a lab at the University of Oregon in Eugene, the 53-year-old Erlandson looks...

Beringia: humans were hereIt was an extraordinary ancient land filled with fantastic creatures and intrepid people. ALEX ROSLIN, Special to The Gazette Published: Saturday, May 17 Beringia is thought by a handful of renegade scientists to be a prehistoric homeland for aboriginal people who later spread across the Americas and the key to one of archeology's greatest Holy Grails - figuring out how humans first got to this continent. This July, Jacques Cinq-Mars, a renowned archeologist living in Longueuil, is heading to Beringia - a vast territory that once spanned the Yukon, Alaska and Siberia - in hopes of resolving...

Abortion is back in the news yet, understandably, many women still find it difficult to talk about. Here Lucy Cavendish – who has been through it twice – offers a candid view Virtually every woman I know of my generation has had an abortion. The problem is that no one talks about it. It is hidden away as if it were a dirty secret. This week, however, every time I've opened a newspaper or turned on the radio, abortion has been the topic du jour. First, Conservative MP Nadine Dorries called for the legal limit for terminations to be...

WASHINGTON: Human beings for 100,000 years lived in tiny, separate groups, facing harsh conditions that brought them to the brink of extinction, before they reunited and populated the world, genetic researchers in a study said on Thursday. "Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago, extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction," said paleontologist Meave Leakey, of Stony Brook University, New York. The genetic study examined for the first time the evolution of our species from its origins with "mitochondrial Eve," a female hominid...

Finding Pre-Clovis Humans in the Oregon High Desert An interview with Dennis Jenkins See Interview About Dennis Jenkins In this interview, conducted at Paisley Five Mile Point Caves on June 13, 2007, by Rick Pettigrew of ALI, Dr. Dennis Jenkins describes the remarkable discovery of human DNA in coprolites dated between 14,000 and 15,000 calibrated years ago. This evidence, reported in the 3 April 2008, issue of the journal Science, strongly supports the proposition that human migrants to North America arrived at least 1000 years before the widespread Clovis complex appeared. The data also support the conclusion that the first...

While diving in the harbor of a small island in Indonesia recently, husband and wife Buck and Fitrie Randolph, with dive guide Toby Fadirsyair, found a strange fish and took some pictures. The oddball creature looks like an anglerfish, but different. Its eyes, unlike those of nearly all fish, point forward and may allow the fish to gauge depth the way humans do. The flat fish has tan- and peach-colored stripes and rippling folds of skin that obscure its fins. About the size of a human fist, it is soft and pliable enough to slip into narrow crevices of coral...

Humans Have More Distinctive Hearing Than Animals, Study Shows ScienceDaily (Apr. 2, 2008) — Do humans hear better than animals? It is known that various species of land and water-based living creatures are capable of hearing some lower and higher frequencies than humans are capable of detecting. However, scientists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and elsewhere have now for the first time demonstrated how the reactions of single neurons give humans the capability of detecting fine differences in frequencies better than animals. They did this by utilizing a technique for recording the activity of single neurons in the auditory...

Upright Walking Began 6 Million Years Ago Newswise — A shape comparison of the most complete fossil femur (thigh bone) of one of the earliest known pre-humans, or hominins, with the femora of living apes, modern humans and other fossils, indicates the earliest form of bipedalism occurred at least six million years ago and persisted for at least four million years. William Jungers, Ph.D., of Stony Brook University, and Brian Richmond, Ph.D., of George Washington University, say their finding indicates that the fossil belongs to very early human ancestors, and that upright walking is one of the first human characteristics...

Skulls Of Modern Humans And Ancient Neanderthals Evolved Differently Because Of Chance, Not Natural SelectionThe approximate locations of the cranial measurements used in the analyses are superimposed as red lines on lateral (A), anterior (B), and inferior (C) views of a human cranium. (Credit: National Academy of Sciences, PNAS (Copyright 2008)) ScienceDaily (Mar. 20, 2008) — New research led by UC Davis anthropologist Tim Weaver adds to the evidence that chance, rather than natural selection, best explains why the skulls of modern humans and ancient Neanderthals evolved differently. The findings may alter how anthropologists think about human evolution. Weaver's study...

Out of Africa, Not Once But Twice Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News Out of Africa March 14, 2008 -- Modern humans are known to have left Africa in a wave of migration around 50,000 years ago, but another, smaller group -- possibly a different subspecies -- left the continent 50,000 years earlier, suggests a new study. While all humans today are related to the second "out of Africa" group, it's likely that some populations native to Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia retain genetic vestiges of the earlier migrants, according to the paper's author, Michael Schillaci. Schillaci, an...

Gorillas have been caught on camera for the first time performing face-to-face intercourse. Humans and bonobos were the only primates thought to mate in this manner. And while researchers have observed wild gorillas engaged in such an act, it had never been photographed. "Our current knowledge of wild western gorillas is very limited, and this report provides information on various aspects of their sexual behavior," said Thomas Breuer of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. "It is fascinating to see similarities between gorilla and human sexual behavior demonstrated by our observation."

Lice from mummies provide clues to ancient migrations By John Noble Wilford Published: February 6, 2008 When two pre-Columbian individuals died 1,000 years ago, arid conditions in the region of what is now Peru naturally mummified their bodies, down to the head lice in their long, braided hair. This was all scientists needed, they reported Wednesday, to extract well-preserved louse DNA and establish that the parasites had accompanied their human hosts in the original peopling of the Americas, probably as early as 15,000 years ago. The DNA matched that of the most common type of louse known to exist worldwide,...

Vets Focus On Neurological Disorders In Dogs, HumansParkinson's disease and epilepsy strike millions of people each year. They also affect countless dogs. (Credit: iStockphoto/Greg Henry) ScienceDaily (Jan. 29, 2008) — Parkinson's disease and epilepsy strike millions of people each year. They also affect countless dogs, and veterinarians at the University of Missouri are working to find ways to treat these and other neurological diseases in both species. Dennis O'Brien, professor of veterinary medicine and surgery and director of the comparative neurology program in the College of Veterinary Medicine, and a team of researchers are investigating the causes and potential treatments...

Skin Color Evolution In Fish And Humans Determined By Same Genetic MachineryOcean sticklebacks are dark colored fish that often migrate into new environments. Multiple stickleback populations have evolved lighter gill and skin colors following colonization of new lakes and streams at the end of the last ice age. Ocean (upper) compared to freshwater creek (lower) sticklebacks, both collected near Vancouver, British Columbia. Scientists have identified a genetic change controlling rapid evolution of skin color in fish, and shown that the same mechanism also contributes to recent evolution of skin color in humans. (Credit: Frank Chan, Craig Miller, and David Kingsley;...

Residents of various continents becoming increasingly different ~~~snip~~~ If evolution had been proceeding steadily at the current rate since humans and chimps separated 6 million years ago, there should be 160 times more differences than the researchers found. That indicates that human evolution had been slower in the distant past, Harpending explained. “Rapid population growth has been coupled with vast changes in cultures and ecology, creating new opportunities for adaptation,” the study says. “The past 10,000 years have seen rapid skeletal and dental evolution in human populations, as well as the appearance of many new genetic responses to diet and...

Humans Appear Hardwired To Learn By 'Over-Imitation' ScienceDaily (Dec. 6, 2007) — Children learn by imitating adults--so much so that they will rethink how an object works if they observe an adult taking unnecessary steps when using that object, according to a new Yale study.Adult retrieves turtle from puzzle box as part of experiment that determined children "over-imitate" adult behavior. (Credit: Yale Department of Psychology) "Even when you add time pressure, or warn the children not to do the unnecessary actions, they seem unable to avoid reproducing the adult's irrelevant actions," said Derek Lyons, doctoral candidate, developmental psychology, and first...

Source: Vanderbilt University Date: October 15, 2007 Humans Perceive Others' Fear Faster Than Other Emotions Science Daily — You may not be fully dressed without a smile, but a look of horror will make a faster first impression. Vanderbilt University researchers have discovered that the brain becomes aware of fearful faces more quickly than those showing other emotions. New research has found that the brain processes images of fearful faces faster than images of neutral or happy faces. (Credit: Vanderbilt University) "There are reasons to believe that the brain has evolved mechanisms to detect things in the environment that signal...

In the study of human origins, paleoanthropology stares in frustration back to a dark age from three million to less than two million years ago. The missing mass in this case is the unfound fossils to document just when and under what circumstances our own genus Homo emerged. The origin of Homo is one of the most intriguing and intractable mysteries in human evolution. New findings only remind scientists that answers to so many of their questions about early Homo probably lie buried in the million-year dark age. It is known that primitive hominids — human ancestors and their close...

LONDON - Neanderthals probably fell victim to taller and superior Cro-Magnons rather than catastrophic climate change, researchers said on Wednesday. Using a new method to calibrate carbon-14 dating, the international team found the last Neanderthals died at least 3,000 years before a major change in temperatures occurred. This suggests either modern humans or a combination of humans and less severe climate change caused the species' demise some 30,000 years ago, said Chronis Tzedakis, a paleoecologist at the University of Leeds, who led the study published in the journal Nature.....

Ancient humans walked but 'struggled to run' By Roger Highfield and Nic Fleming Last Updated: 12:01pm BST 11/09/2007 Ancient humans almost certainly walked upright on two legs millions of years ago but may have struggled to run at even half the speed of modern man, according to computer simulations. A University of Manchester study - presented to the British Association for the Advancement of Science Festival of Science in York- proposes that if early humans lacked an Achilles tendon, as modern chimps and gorillas do, then their ability to run would have been severely compromised. Our early ancestors preferred to...

A British pro-life group warns that a new type of embryo research, likely to be approved this week by a U.K. government panel, undermines human dignity. Britain's Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority is expected to give a green light this week to U.K. laboratories seeking to create the first animal-human embryos for medical research using eggs taken from dead cows. British scientists want to use the hybrid embryos in order to research genetic diseases. Anthony Ozimic, political secretary for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, opposes the embryo-destructive research. He says that an "a-nucleated" cow egg will only...

Source: Geological Society of America Date: August 30, 2007 Migration of Early Humans From Africa Aided By Wet Weather Science Daily — The African origin of early modern humans 200,000--150,000 years ago is now well documented, with archaeological data suggesting that a major migration from tropical east Africa to the Levant took place between 130,000 and 100,000 years ago via the presently hyper-arid Saharan-Arabian desert. This migration was dependent on the occurrence of wetter climate in the region. Whereas there is good evidence that the southern and central Saharan-Arabian desert experienced increased monsoon precipitation during this period, no unequivocal evidence...

Source: American Geophysical Union Date: August 2, 2007 Early Humans In China One Million Years Ago Science Daily — Chronology and adaptability of early humans in different paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental settings are important topics in the study of human evolution. China houses several early-human (Paleolithic) archaeological sites along the Nihewan Basin near Mongolia, some with artifacts that date back about 1 million years ago. Deng et al. analyze one specific locality in the Nihewan Basin, called the Feiliang Paleolithic Site, where several stone artifacts and mammalian bone fragments have been found buried in basin silts. By analyzing remnant magnetizations of...

Elephants, Human Ancestors Evolved in Synch, DNA Reveals Hope Hamashige for National Geographic News July 23, 2007 The tooth of a mastodon buried beneath Alaska's permafrost for many thousands of years is yielding surprising clues about the history of elephants—and humans. A team of researchers recently extracted DNA from the tooth to put together the first complete mastodon mitochondrial genome. The study, published in the journal PLoS Biology, significantly alters the evolutionary timeline for elephants and their relatives. The research may put to rest a contentious debate by showing that woolly mammoths are more closely related to Asian elephants than...

WASHINGTON - Why did humans evolve to walk upright? Perhaps because it's just plain easier. Make that "energetically less costly," in science-speak, and you have the conclusion of researchers who are proposing a likely reason for our modern gait. Bipedalism — walking on two feet — is one of the defining characteristics of being human, and scientists have debated for years how it came about. In the latest attempt to find an explanation, researchers trained five chimpanzees to walk on a treadmill while wearing masks that allowed measurement of their oxygen consumption.

Mary Zwo was six weeks old, neglected by her mother and abused by her father, when she was admitted to a pediatric intensive care unit at a university hospital. Mary was dehydrated, with low blood sugar and at risk of hypothermia. Doctors quickly put her in an incubator. Mary Zwo is a gorilla. "Gorilla babies are similar to human babies," the German zoo director in the western German city of Munster explained to der Speigel magazine. Her human caretakers ("caregivers"?) thought the care in a veterinary clinic wouldn't be good enough.

HUMANS are just one of the millions of species on Earth, but we use up almost a quarter of the sun's energy captured by plants - the most of any species. The human dominance of this natural resource is affecting other species, reducing the amount of energy available to them by almost 10 per cent, scientists report. Researchers said the findings showed humans were using "a remarkable share" of the earth's plant productivity "to meet the needs and wants of one species". They also warned that the increased use of biofuels - such as ethanol and canola - should be...

Once upon a time, Mary-Claire King and the late Allan Wilson published a paper — that became a widely-cited classic — about the genetic similarity of chimps and humans. “Evolution at Two Levels in Humans and Chimpanzees,” Science 188 (1975):107-116 was, alas, cited far more for proving the genetic near-identity of chimps and humans than for its much more interesting, deeper and more disturbing message...

Ancient trade-off may explain why humans get HIV 19:00 21 June 2007 NewScientist.com news service Roxanne Khamsi A protein that protected our human ancestors against a virus that ravaged other primates may now be responsible for our susceptibility to HIV, a new study suggests. The discovery could help scientists predict which viruses found in other species are most likely to cross over and lethally infect humans. The idea that early humans had an immune system that differed from other primates first came about after biologists sequenced the chimp genome. The chimp sequence contains 130 copies of a virus called Pan...

SCITUATE -- Just off the Massachusetts coast is one of the richest marine habitats in the United States, an arc of shallow ocean called Stellwagen Bank, where whales, tuna, cod, and dozens of other species have dined on an underwater smorgasbord for thousands of years. Recognizing the critical importance of Stellwagen Bank in 1992, Congress designated the area a national marine sanctuary, a nature preserve where sea life and habitat would be protected while allowing compatible commercial uses such as fishing and whale watching. But today Stellwagen Bank is a sanctuary in name only, according to conservationists and other observers....