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Archaeologists from the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, the Leibniz Zentrum für Archäologie and Leiden University say they have found cut marks on the bones of two beaver species from the 400,000-year-old hominin open air site of Bilzingsleben in central Germany. Their results demonstrate a greater diversity of prey choice by Middle Pleistocene hominins than commonly acknowledged, and a much deeper history of broad-spectrum subsistence than commonly assumed, already visible in prey choices 400,000 years ago...They used magnifying glasses and digital microscopes to analyze 2,496 remains (1,963 teeth and 533 cranial and postcranial bones and bone fragments) of two beaver species:...

Artist rendering of H. bodoensis. (Ettore Mazza) Scientists have named a new species that may have been the direct ancestor of modern humans. The newly proposed species, Homo bodoensis – which lived more than half a million years ago in Africa – may help to untangle how human lineages moved and interacted across the globe. Although modern humans, Homo sapiens, are the only surviving human lineage, other human species once roamed Earth. For example, scientists recently discovered that the Indonesian island Flores was once home to the extinct species Homo floresiensis, often known as "the hobbit" for its miniature body....