Jane Goodall, legendary primatologist, has died at age 91 Jane Goodall, primatologist who transformed our understanding of the lives of apes, has died, according to an announcement from the Jane Goodall Institute.

www.npr.org/2025/10/01/4...

Neanderthal Families Took Trips to the Beaches of Portugal Around 80,000 Years Ago Learn about the first Neanderthal tracksites found in the Iberian Peninsula, featuring footprints from adults, adolescents, and children.

www.discovermagazine.com/neanderthal-...

The problem skulls from Yunxian The relationships of fossils from deep time in China may help reveal ancestral connections for the Denisovans

Could there be a connection between a squashed million-year-old skull and the Denisovans? I look at whether a provocative new study can be squared with what we already know from ancient genomes. I think there's a way.

www.johnhawks.net/p/the-proble...

Million-Year-Old Skull Reveals Homo Sapiens Are Nearly Twice As Old As We Thought And our ancestors may have originated outside of Africa.

Million-Year-Old Skull Reveals Homo Sapiens Are Nearly Twice As Old As We Thought

This article examines the split between Neanderthals, Denisovans, @ Homo sapiens, evaluating when this split took place and the ancestor-descendent relationships between each group.

www.iflscience.com/million-year...

Hobbits of Flores evolved to be small by slowing down growth during childhood, research suggests Until Homo floresiensis was discovered, scientists assumed that the evolution of the human lineage was defined by bigger and bigger brains. Via a process called encephalization, human brains evolved t...

phys.org/news/2025-09...

Hobbits of Flores evolved to be small by slowing down growth during childhood, new research on teeth and brain size suggests New research on the size relationship between brains and wisdom teeth suggests that bigger brains aren’t necessarily the driving force in human evolution.

theconversation.com/hobbits-of-f...

The hunted, not the hunters: AI reveals early humans were prey for leopards A new study may be about to rewrite a part of our early human history. It has long been thought that Homo habilis, often considered the first true human species, was the one to turn the tables on the ...

phys.org/news/2025-09...

Hybrid Mammoth Fossils Discovered In Canada Reveal Thousands Of Years Of Interbreeding Two fossilized teeth, belonging to hybrids of woolly and Columbian mammoths, have been found.

www.iflscience.com/hybrid-mammo...

Concerning behavioral changes seen in chimps may hold clues to past and future pandemics Bat guano's minerals and nutrient content helps explain a disturbing shift in the diet of chimpanzees in the forests of Uganda.

Concerning behavioral changes seen in chimps may hold clues to past and future pandemics.

Chimps and other species resort to eating bat guano to meet nutrient and mineral needs as their ecosystems are altered by human activities, depleting resources.

www.earth.com/news/concern...

A Breakthrough Prehistoric Discovery May Rewrite Early Human History More than 100 artifacts on Turkey’s Aegean coast hints that humans and Neanderthals may have crossed a vanished bridge now submerged beneath the sea.

www.404media.co/a-breakthrou...

520-million-year-old fossil with brain and guts intact is called an 'archeological miracle' Researchers discovered a 520-million-year-old fossil of an arthropod named Youti yuanshi that still had its brain and guts intact.

520-million-year-old fossil with brain and guts intact is called an 'archeological miracle'

www.earth.com/news/520-mil...

“in this incredible tiny larva, natural fossilization has achieved almost perfect preservation,” noted study co-author Dr. Katherine Dobson of the University of Strathclyde.

Over the course of a day… so the effects are probably negligible.

Wild chimpanzees consume the equivalent of 2 cocktails a day in the form of boozy fruit, research finds A new study on chimpanzees in Uganda and Côte d'Ivoire supports a theory that humans may have inherited a taste for alcohol from primate ancestors.

www-cbsnews-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.cbsn...

The tale of the creature with the most chromosomes The Atlas blue butterfly, also known as Polyommatus atlantica, has been genetically confirmed as having the highest number of chromosomes out of all multicellular animals in the world.

phys.org/news/2025-09...

In marmosets, as in humans, this also happens to be an incredibly social time, Ghazanfar said. That's because marmoset moms, like human mothers, don't raise their offspring without help. Babies interact with multiple caregivers who respond to every cry

Importantly, most of that growth happens not in the confines of the womb, as is the case for chimpanzees and macaques, but right around the time they are born and first experience the outside world.

The results suggest that, in early infancy, the brains of humans and marmosets are growing faster than those of other primates.

The researchers also found that baby marmosets who received more frequent adult feedback during their babbling bouts were quicker to catch on. They learned to produce adult-like calls significantly faster than the controls.

Fast-growing brains may explain how humans—and marmosets—learn to talk When a baby babbles and their parents respond, these back-and-forth exchanges are more than adorable-if-incoherent chatter—they help to build a baby's emerging language skills.

As newborn marmosets grow, their first sputtering cries transform into the more whistle-like calls of adults.

phys.org/news/2025-09...

The queens allow sperm to enter the egg and somehow remove their own genetic material, thereby creating males and not sterile female workers.

"Impossible To Imagine": Queen Ants Produce Babies Of 2 Different Species, And It's Never Been Seen Before This is the first and only known species to do so.

M. ibericus queens produce male offspring without their own nuclear genome; these offspring are clones of a sole source of genetic material that is stored in the spermatheca.

www.iflscience.com/impossible-t...

A Closer Look at: Ardipithecus ramidus Ardipithecus ramidus is one of the most complete hominid skeletons found so far, and the earliest one to be unequivocally accepted as a bipedal human ancestor. This is a diary series in which we ...

About Ardipithecus ramidus

www.dailykos.com/stories/2025...

Some small primates still do this - dwarf lemurs in Madagascar dig themselves underground and sleep for several months when it gets too cold, protecting themselves from freezing temperatures under layers of roots and leaves.

Early primates may have survived freezing winters by hibernating like bears do today - slowing down their heart rate and sleeping through the coldest months to save energy.

When primates moved to completely different, more stable climates, they travelled much further distances - about 561 kilometres on average compared to just 137 kilometres for those staying in similar, unstable climates.

Primates that could travel far when their local weather changed quickly were better at surviving and having babies that lived to become new species.

When local temperatures or rainfall changed quickly in any direction, primates were forced to find new homes, which helped create new species, the researchers explained.

It was millions of years later that primates reached tropical forests. They started in cold places, then moved to mild climates, then to dry desert-like areas, and finally made it to the hot, wet jungles we see them in today.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The earliest members of primate evolution, existing in the Paleocene epoch, most likely lived in North America in a cold climate with hot summers and freezing winters, according to this research.

This trait helps primates navigate an unpredictable social world, and likely provided key foundations for the evolution of human culture and sociality as they extended across time, space, and group boundaries