Archaeology

New fossil and archaeological finds, along with insights from genetics, are upending the story of our origins

A radical new take on human evolution adds a large dose of luck to the usual story emphasizing the importance of our forebears' ability to make tools

Genome comparisons reveal the DNA that distinguishes Homo sapiens from its kin

The German lawyer, author, poet, politician and artist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (born August 28, 1749-1832) was also a mining engineer and quite interested in geology and paleontology.

A North Texas family, who discovered the skeleton of a 20,000- to 40,000-year-old mammoth while mining through sediment on their farm, is preparing to turn over the remains to a local museum. In May, Wayne McEwen and his family were gathering material from a gravel pit on their property, south of Dallas, when his son struck a 6-foot (1.8 meter) tusk while operating an excavator.

Carbon-dating improvements show that Neandertals disappeared from Europe much earlier than thought

I've just returned from LonCon3, the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention, held at the enormous ExCel Exhibition Centre in east London. Yeah, I know, sci-fi isn't exactly a normal part of the Tet Zoo remit but, on this occasion, there really is overlap since I was there for a set of special Speculative Biology talks [...]

Egyptians used the same general formula to soak burial linens as early as 4200 B.C.

Excavations of an ancient Wyoming sinkhole containing a rare trove of fossils of Ice Age mammals have unearthed hundreds of bones of such prehistoric animals as American cheetahs, a paleontologist said on Friday.

Some time round about 165 million years ago, the group of small, feathered dinosaurs that we call birds evolved from within the theropod radiation (theropods are the so-called `predatory dinosaurs': the great group that includes animals like Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor as well as the birds).

The event you've all been waiting for is here: Simbirskiasaurus and Pervushovisaurus have been resurrected, and we're all wondering what the hell's going on with their absurd, complex nostrils.

Is the planet undergoing the sixth mass extinction in its history courtesy of the human species?