Our species emerged as a result of a mind-bending number of random events and mutations, but it may also have been inevitable that humans, or something like us, would walk the Earth.
Source: BBC – Future – Would humans evolve again if we rewound time?
What can a deer-tooth necklace seemingly made for the burial of a woman in France tell us about our Ice Age ancestors?
Source: What a deer-tooth necklace says about our Ice Age ancestors | Aeon Ideas
How did humans get to be so much fatter than our closest primate relatives, despite sharing 99% of the same DNA? A new study suggests that part of the answer may have to do with an ancient molecular shift in how DNA is packaged inside fat cells, which curbed our body’s ability to turn ‘bad’ white fat into ‘good’ brown fat.
Ancient DNA help scientists study human evolution: ‘It’s like a time capsule’
Proteins dating back more than one million years have been extracted from some fossils, and could help to answer some difficult questions about archaic humans.
Source: Move over, DNA: ancient proteins are starting to reveal humanity’s history
Researcher: “By 2.6 million years ago, they were beginning to understand the relationship between the folk physics of where to strike something, and how hard to hit it, and what angles to select,” … Well, you have to start somewhere.
Source: Researchers: Tools from 2.6 million years ago have been found | Uncommon Descent
Carol Ward: It seems to be a behavior that was present in some of the earliest members of our branch of the family tree. It represented what was really the initial major adaptive change from any apelike creature that came before us.
Source: Paleontologist: Humans walked on two legs from the beginning | Uncommon Descent
Supernovae bombarded Earth with cosmic energy starting as many as 8 million years ago, with a peak some 2.6 million years ago, initiating an avalanche of electrons in the lower atmosphere and setting off a chain of events that feasibly ended with bipedal hominins.
Source: Did ancient supernovae prompt human ancestors to walk upright? — ScienceDaily
New computational analysis finds that more than two dozen human zinc finger transcription factors, previously thought to control activity of similar genes across species have in fact human-specific roles and could help explain how our species came to be.
Neanderthals and modern humans diverged at least 800,000 years ago, substantially earlier than indicated by most DNA-based estimates, according to new research.
Darwiniana 