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PARIS (AFP) – Ancient fossilized teeth of small anthropoid monkeys discovered in Libya suggest our earliest ancestors may have migrated from Asia to Africa, research published Wednesday showed. The origin of anthropoids -- primates including monkeys, apes and humans -- has long been a source of hot debate among palaeontologists. Experts have long argued anthropoids first appeared in Africa -- but recent studies suggest an earlier Asian origin, dating 55 million years ago. Now new fossils, dating 38 to 39 million years ago and discovered in Dur At-Talah in central Libya, further complicate the debate. They reveal the existence of...

‘Bottleneck’ dates back 600 to 800 years, genome analysis shows; researcher says among population ‘everyone is a 30th cousin. Illustrative photo of Ashkenazi Jews, taken from Nurit Ben Sheetri's 'The Redheads' exhibit at Dizengoff Center (courtesy Nurit Ben Sheetrit) A new study concludes that all Ashkenazi Jews can trace their ancestry to a “bottleneck” of just 350 individuals, dating back to between 600 and 800 years ago. The study, published in the Nature Communications journal Tuesday, was authored by Shai Carmi, a computer science professor at Columbia University, and more than 20 medical researchers from Yale, Columbia, Yeshiva University’s Albert...

One whole endogenous retrovirus genome -- and bits of 17 others -- were spotted in a study of 2,500 human genomes... Nineteen new pieces of DNA -- left by viruses that first infected our ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago -- have just been found, lurking between our own genes. And one stretch of newfound DNA, found in about 50 of the 2,500 people studied, contains an intact, full genetic recipe for an entire virus, say the scientists who published their findings today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Whether or not it can replicate, or...

A University of California, Irvine scientist says viruses are much, much more than nasty little microbes that infect us with the flu. If he is right, they have infected all of life - with evolution. In an astonishing set of papers and a new book, UCI virologist Luis Villarreal contends viruses are largely responsible for shaping how we look, how we speak, even how we think. In fact, he says, they are an overlooked evolutionary force, one that has been powerfully influencing the shape of living things since life began - actually, since a little before life began. "I'm saying...

Origin Of Bipedalism Closely Tied To Environmental Changes Champaign - May 01, 2002 During the past 100 years, scientists have tossed around a great many hypotheses about the evolutionary route to bipedalism, to what inspired our prehuman ancestors to stand up straight and amble off on two feet. Now, after an extensive study of evolutionary, anatomical and fossil evidence, a team of paleoanthropologists has narrowed down the number of tenable hypotheses to explain bipedalism and our prehuman ancestors' method of navigating their world before they began walking upright. The hypothesis they found the most support for regarding the origin of...

Results from research conducted by a team of scholars and scientists on the dietary lives of orangutans in tropical Borneo have given possible clues to how very early human ancestors may have adapted, survived and changed millions of years ago. In addition, the results may help scientists better understand eating disorders and obesity in human populations today. Led by evolutionary anthropologist Erin Vogel of Rutgers University (pictured below, right), the research team analyzed samples of compounds and byproducts in Orangutan urine over a 5-year period to determine the effects of protein recycling in their dietary, or eating behavior. What they...

New evidence underscores the theory of human origin that suggests humans most likely share a common ancestor with orangutans, according to research from the University of Pittsburgh and the Buffalo Museum of Science. Reporting in the June 18 edition of the Journal of Biogeography, the researchers reject as "problematic" the popular suggestion, based on DNA analysis, that humans are most closely related to chimpanzees, which they maintain is not supported by fossil evidence.

...for use in genetics-based population divergence studies. Abstract: The length of the human generation interval is a key parameter when using genetics to date population divergence events. However, no consensus exists regarding the generation interval length, and a wide variety of interval lengths have been used in recent studies. This makes comparison between studies difficult, and questions the accuracy of divergence date estimations. Recent genealogy-based research suggests that the male generation interval is substantially longer than the female interval, and that both are greater than the values commonly used in genetics studies. This study evaluates each of these hypotheses in...

Have you ever wondered why you don't have thick hair covering your whole body like a dog, cat or gorilla does? Humans aren't the only mammals with sparse hair. Elephants, rhinos and naked mole rats also have very little hair. It's true for some marine mammals, such as whales and dolphins, too. Scientists think the earliest mammals, which lived at the time of the dinosaurs, were quite hairy. But over hundreds of millions of years, a small handful of mammals, including humans, evolved to have less hair. What's the advantage of not growing your own fur coat? I'm a biologist...

Humans are the only mammals with long hair on their heads. Scientists look into what drives this unique feature. Humans evolved long hair on their head to prevent overheating and excess water loss when walking under the hot sun in Africa. iStock, Delmaine Donson In 2004, a Chinese woman named Xie Qiuping won the Guinness World Record for the longest human scalp hair at 5.627 meters—the length of an adult male giraffe! While this is an anomaly, humans are the only mammals that have negligible body hair, but extremely long hair on their heads. “It's such an important part of...

An evolutionary biologist has challenged the long-held theory that suggests the first humans emerged from African. Dr Huan Shi, from China, proposed evolution began in East Asia where fossils predating the Africa timeline have been found. Evidence of genetic diversity is at the heart of his 'out of East Asia' theory, based on a concept called 'maximum genetic diversity' (MGD) that states complex species are more likely to have less genetic diversity.

* An adult male named Rakus chewed a plant used by people in Southeast Asia to treat pain and inflammation, then applied it to an injury on his right cheek * Photographs show the animal’s wound closed within a month without any problems ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Rakus, a Sumatran orangutan, is seen two months after he started treating himself with a medicinal plant at a protected rainforest area in Indonesia. Photo:Safruddin/Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour via Reuters AsiaSoutheast Asia Wild orangutan seen using medicinal plant to treat wound, scientists say An adult male named Rakus chewed a plant used by people...

Humans are basically aquatic mammals (Elaine Morgan...); that means, amongst other things, that many if not most places on Earth where humans have lived in the remote past might now be under the waves as is the case with the Yonaguni ruins off of Okinawa. Having a sense of smell no better than humans possess would be fatal for any land prey animal. Notice however that aquatic mammals do not really require much of a sense of smell. Elaine Morgan listed a hundred or so traits1which we share with other aquatic mammals but there are a few which stand out:...

Researchers have found evidence that a coronavirus epidemic swept East Asia some 20,000 years ago and was devastating enough to leave an evolutionary imprint on the DNA of people alive today. The new study suggests that an ancient coronavirus plagued the region for many years, researchers say. The finding could have dire implications for the Covid-19 pandemic if it’s not brought under control soon through vaccination. Four other coronaviruses can also infect people, but they usually cause only mild colds. Scientists did not directly observe these coronaviruses becoming human pathogens, so they have relied on indirect clues to estimate when...

An ancient coronavirus, or a closely related pathogen, triggered an epidemic among ancestors of present-day East Asians roughly 25,000 years ago, a new study indicates.Analysis of DNA from more than 2,000 people shows that genetic changes in response to that persistent epidemic accumulated over the next 20,000 years or so, David Enard, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, reported April 8 at the virtual annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. The finding raises the possibility that some East Asians today have inherited biological adaptations to coronaviruses or closely related viruses.The discovery opens the...

To extract ancient human chromosomal DNA from caves, Vernot and colleagues identified regions in chromosomes rich in mutations specific to hominids to help the team filter out nonhuman DNA. This helped the researchers successfully analyze Neandertal chromosomal DNA from more than 150 samples of sediment roughly 50,000 to 200,000 years old from a cave in Spain and two caves in Siberia.After the team compared its data with DNA previously collected from Neandertal fossils of about the same age, the findings suggested that all these Neandertals were split into two genetically distinct waves that both dispersed across Eurasia. One emerged about...

SUNY-Albany biologist Caro-Beth Stewart and NYU anthropologist Todd R. Disotell have proposed... that the ancestor of humans and the living African apes evolved in Eurasia, not Africa. This controversial new model for the evolution of humans and apes is the cover story of the July 30th issue of Current Biology. Stewart and Disotell describe their theory in an article entitled "Primate evolution -- in and out of Africa." ...The fossil record indicates that apes were present in Europe and Western Asia during the Miocene Era, from about 8 to 17 million years ago. Ancestors of these ape species must have...

Stone man. This partial skull of a 500,000-year-old human was found in a slab of travertine from a quarry like this one in Turkey.Credit: John Kappelman/University of Texas, Austin Workers at a travertine factory near Denizli, Turkey, were startled recently when they sawed a block of the limestone for tiles and discovered part of a human skull. Now, it appears they unwittingly exposed fossilized remains of a long-sought species of human that lived 500,000 years ago, researchers say. Although only four skull fragments were found, the fossil also reveals the earliest case of tuberculosis. The Middle East has long been...

Most Ancient Case Of Tuberculosis Found In 500,000-year-old Human; Points To Modern Health IssuesView of the inside of a plaster cast of the skull of the newly discovered young male Homo erectus from western Turkey. The stylus points to tiny lesions 1-2 mm in size found along the rim of bone just behind the right eye orbit. The lesions were formed by a type of tuberculosis that infects the brain and, at 500,000 years in age, represents the most ancient case of TB known in humans. (Credit: Marsha Miller, the University of Texas at Austin)" ScienceDaily (Dec. 7, 2007) —...

Humans Migrated Out of Africa, Then Some Went Back, Study Says Stefan Lovgren for National Geographic News December 14, 2006 Humans first moved out of Africa about 70,000 years ago, but 30,000 years later some of them moved back. That's according to a new study based on DNA evidence from ancient human remains found in Africa. The study shows that a small group of early humans returned to Africa after migrating to the Middle East. In addition, the research suggests that the humans' return occurred around the same time that another group of humans left the Middle East and moved...