"I imagine there might be some though who will be skeptical -- as is always the case." Their argument centers on a timeline: The oldest known Homo fossil, a jawbone, is dated at 2.8 million years old, ...

An ancient human relative was able to walk the ground on two legs and use their upper limbs to climb and swing like apes, according to a new study of 2 million-year-old vertebrae fossils. An ...

Composite reconstruction of Australopithecus sediba, based on remains from three individuals found at the site of Malapa in South Africa. Image: Courtesy of Lee R. Berger and the University of the ...

South Africa's Australopithecus sediba, discovered in 2008 at the renowned archaeological site of Malapa in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, is again helping us to study and understand the ...

A diagram of how the skeletons of Australopithecus sediba came to be preserved in the Malapa cave deposit. From Dirks et al, 2010. A little less than two million years ago, in what is now South Africa ...

When studying how fossil hominids moved, researchers usually analyze the morphology of bones—which is crucial for understanding the evolution of bipedalism—focusing mainly on muscle insertion sites.

In 2008, a nine-year-old boy named Matthew Berger chased after his dog Tau near a site called the Cradle of Humankind in South Africa. As he ran past the Malapa pit, he tripped. Pausing to examine ...

Spinal bones of an extinct human relative have been found in lumps of rock blasted out of a South African cave and used to reconstruct one of the most complete back fossils of any hominin. The spine ...