Archaeology

Hadrosaurs could outrun tyrannosaurusesbecause of the layout of the herbivores’ tail muscles

The discovery shows, for the first time, that Homo sapiens was living in the Near East at the same time as Neandertals

To a human, two billion years is an unfathomable interval. But that, a team of European, Gabonese, and American scientists now say, is how long ago a recently discovered hoard of fossils suggests Earth’s first big life evolved — large enough to see with the naked eye, and in a spectrum of forms that tease [...]

Midway through the school year, parents and teachers are starting to plan (and fundraise) for winter and spring field trips. Among the most popular destinations is the science museum.

Scientists are using exotic technologies to excavate underwater shipwrecks with the same precision as an archaeological dig

It is getting harder and harder to figure out what distinguished Homo sapiens from other members of the human family and fueled our extraordinary success as a species.

Newly discovered Maya artwork illuminates an ancient clash

Books and recommendations from Scientific American

Long-sought clues to Maya governance emerge from an exquisitely preserved frieze

Paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson's first glimpse of Lucy came on November 24, 1974

 

Forty years ago today, a young American paleoanthropologist named Donald Johanson made the discovery of a lifetime in the arid badlands of Ethiopia's remote Afar region: a 3.2-million-year-old skeleton of a small-brained creature that walked upright like we do.

Scientists will examine the mammoth to learn whether it will yield enough undamaged DNA to make cloning the extinct creature a reality