Everything we know about the group of human ancestors called australopiths comes from just a few dozen fossils. But a skull discovered in Ethiopia is now changing anthropologists' understanding of the ...

The recent discovery of a 3.8m-year-old cranium (skull without the lower jaw) is the hottest topic of conversation among palaeoanthropologists right now. But fossils are found all the time, so why is ...

Australopithecus anamensis has been at the center of a number of scientific debates. This is a diary series in which we take a closer look at hominins, fossil ancestors of the human family.

The 3.8 million-year-old fossil cranium represents a time interval between 4.1 and 3.6 million years ago, when A. anamensis gave rise to A. afarensis. Researchers used morphological features of the ...

The names scientists give to humanity’s ancient relatives are more than labels. They encode a story about who counts as close kin and who sits on a separate branch of the family tree. Now a researcher ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists on Wednesday announced the landmark discovery in Ethiopia of a nearly complete skull of an early human ancestor that lived 3.8 million years ago, a species boasting ...

Australopithecus anamensis is the earliest-known species of Australopithecus, and widely accepted as the progenitor of Lucy's species, Australopithecus afarensis. Until now, A. anamensis was known ...

Scientists have published an article describing the oldest axial fossils yet discovered for the genus Australopithecus. Dated 4.2 million years ago, these and other fossils recovered from the Assa ...