For the first time, researchers successfully sequenced the genome of ancient human fossils from the Late Pleistocene in southern China. The data, published in the journal The lateral view of the skull unearthed from Red Dear Cave [Credit: Xueping Ji] “Ancient DNA technique is a really powerful tool,” Su says. “It tells us quite definitively…
The human middle ear—which houses three tiny, vibrating bones—is key to transporting sound vibrations into the inner ear, where they become nerve impulses that allow us to hear. The 3D braincase of Shuyu [Credit: IVPP] Embryonic and fossil evidence proves that the human middle ear evolved from the spiracle of fishes. However, the origin of…
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Scientists at the Centro Nacional de Investigacion sobre la Evolucion Humana (CENIEH) form part of a team of Chinese, Spanish, and French scientists that has just published a study of what may prove to be China’s most ancient human fossil, in the Remains of jawbone and teeth of Gongwangling skull [Credit: Xing Song] This site…
Read More “‘Homo erectus’ from Gongwangling could have been the earliest population in China” »
A research team at Kiel University has reconstructed in detail the spread of the grain from East Asia to Central Europe. Broomcorn millet shortly before harvest [Credit: © Wiebke Kirleis] People were already living in a globalized world 3,500 years ago. That is the conclusion of researchers at Kiel University (CAU). They have been able…
Read More “Millet in the Bronze Age: A Superfood conquers the World” »
A research team from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS) has discovered a new middle Cambrian (5.04 mya) konservat-lagerstätte in the Zhangxia Formation in Shandong Province, North China, and named it the Linyi Lagerstätte. Life on the platform margin of the Miaolingian Sea, North China, based on…
Read More “Linyi Lagerstätte: A new window on Cambrian fauna evolution” »
Ichthyosaurs are a group of successful Mesozoic marine reptiles that have a worldwide distribution, but their evolutionary origin is still unclear. In recent years, many new marine reptiles related to ichthyosaurs, and called early ichthyosauromorphs, have been found in rocks of Early Triassic age and shed light on the origin of ichthyosaurs. These early ichthyosauromorphs…
Read More “A new three metre long Mesozoic marine reptile discovered in China” »
Approximately 80 miles from the westernmost reach of China’s Great Wall, paleontologists found relics of an even more ancient world. Over the last two decades, teams of researchers unearthed more than 100 specimens of fossil birds that lived approximately 120 million years ago, during the time of the dinosaurs. However, many of these fossils have…
Read More “New fossil birds discovered near China’s Great Wall” »
University of Manchester research fellow David Legg, in collaboration with a team of international scientists from China, Switzerland, and Sweden, has today announced a new fossil that reveals the origin of gills in arthropods. Erratus Sperare – the new missing link fossil [Credit: University of Manchester] Arthropods, the group of animals that includes creepy crawlies…
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Lakes in alpine locations react sensitively to climate change. Researchers led by the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), and the Faculty of Geosciences at Southwest Jiaotong University in Chengdu, China, have analyzed in detail the changes in a lake in the northern Tibetan highlands since the end of the last ice…
Read More “Lessons from the Ice Age: Alpine lakes react to climate change in their ecology” »
A large-scale tomb cluster dating back to the late Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC) was recently discovered in Shaojiapeng Village, Anyang City of central China’s Henan Province, according to the city’s institute of cultural relics and archaeology. Warriors from their retinue and horses for drawing chariots were sacrificed by being buried alive at the funerals of…
Read More “3,000-year-old clan cemetery uncovered in central China” »
