Cambridge archaeologists attribute a 15 mm hole in the Shanidar A Neanderthal's shoulder blade to a wooden spear about 75,000 years ago. Whether the thrust was a hunting accident or violence between people cannot be known, the authors write.
Perspective Coverage
12 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 47%
- Operator
- Operator 43%
- Investor
- Investor 10%
Reality
- Evidence72
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+18
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence72
Dropping one humerus estimate leaves Omo I shorter and heavier than the old reconstruction
Anthropologists Osbjorn Pearson and John Fleagle estimate Omo I at about 1.65 m and 71 kg after dropping one doubtful humerus length. Their reanalysis rests on one skeleton and the lower of two stature estimates, so it tests ideas about early Homo sapiens bodies without settling them.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence50
A diving hypothesis for human endurance draws praise and objections from anthropologists
Two researchers propose that diving for food about 2 million to 3 million years ago helped shape human endurance. The hypothesis, published September 17 in PaleoAnthropology, has drawn both support and sharp objections.
Reality
- Evidence30
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap−5
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence40
Drimolen Cave's first adult Homo erectus fossil backs a 2-million-year date in South Africa
La Trobe University researchers described 18 Drimolen Cave fossils, including an adult Homo erectus skull fragment dated to about 2 million years ago. The adult specimen shores up an age for the species in southern Africa that had rested on a child's skull.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives50
- Confidence45
La Trobe researchers describe DNH 127, the first adult Homo erectus fossil from South Africa's Drimolen cave, dated to 2 million years ago. It is 200,000 years older than adult specimens found elsewhere and supports a first-appearance date that had rested on a child's skull from the same cave.
Reality
- Evidence68
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+25
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence62
Ohio State researchers filmed wild sooty mangabeys climbing thin trunks in Ivory Coast. The measurement removes ankle anatomy as a clean way to sort what the human-chimp ancestor did in trees.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence60
Fu Qiaomei's team could not get DNA out of the Bianfu Cave bones, so protein variants had to carry the identification, and a morphological pre-screen had to make the mass spectrometry affordable at a site holding more than 64,000 fragments.
Perspective Coverage
7 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 48%
- Operator
- Operator 45%
- Investor
- Investor 7%
Reality
- Evidence80
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives35
- Confidence72
The forthcoming PaleoAnthropology paper argues that pacing oxygen across repeated shallow dives built the cardiorespiratory stamina later used for running, with a two-hour recording of one Ama diver's shift supplying the measurements.
Reality
- Evidence36
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+22
- Incentives58
- Confidence55
Arm and thigh bone strength in seven fossils separates Australopithecus from early Homo
A USC-led team scanned seven fossil skeletons and read each one's arm strength against its own leg bones. The split they found puts a change in how our ancestors moved at about two million years ago.
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives55
- Confidence55
Re-dated Lebanese collections yield a 300,000-year record for the central Levant
Gabriele Russo's team re-read fossils excavated in Lebanon more than a century ago, dating Ras el-Kelb to about 400,000 years and Nahr Ibrahim to about 250,000, and finding forests unlike the southern Levant's.
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+14
- Incentives55
- Confidence62
Neanderthals in the Nefud, argued entirely from the way a flake was struck
A Quaternary Science Reviews study redates Jebel Katefeh-1 to 60,000-50,000 years ago and reads its prepared flakes as Neanderthal work, at a median likelihood of 78 percent.
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+22
- Incentives32
- Confidence52
Neanderthal hips had the wide birth canal without the walking penalty
Digital reconstructions of two Neanderthal pelvises put the childbirth-versus-bipedalism trade-off under strain, and point at the pelvic floor instead.
Reality
- Evidence56
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+18
- Incentives24
- Confidence46
Two dredged leg bones now define Denisovan height. Two bones cannot define a species.
Stature estimates of 1.8 and 1.9 metres come from an incomplete femur and a tibia pulled off the seabed, undated and with no recorded find-spot. The anatomy is fine; the sample is the problem.
Reality
- Evidence42
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+38
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence48
Neanderthals in the Nefud: stone flakes, a drying lake, and no bones at all
A statistical study of tool shapes puts Neanderthals in the Saudi desert about 55,000 years ago. The inference is careful, the climate story is tidy, and the skeletal evidence is nonexistent.
Reality
- Evidence52
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+14
- Incentives42
- Confidence55
Two Neanderthal pelvises suggest the strange hip belongs to the modern human male
A Tel Aviv University team reports that male Neanderthal pelvises track modern human females, not males, inverting a baseline used for decades to read hominin hips.
Reality
- Evidence38
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+34
- Incentives64
- Confidence42