Study: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joa.70236

People tend to think of our bones as solid, unchanging support structures inside our bodies, but a recent study from the University of Chicago shows just how much they can change depending on how we use them.

Using detailed CT scanning, researchers compared ankle bones from modern people who usually wear shoes and those of Indigenous people who go barefoot and saw significant differences in their internal structures.

The study offers a new way of understanding the evolution of walking in our fossil ancestors by providing reference points for how behaviors shape our skeletons.

" A lot of people think the skeleton is a fixed thing, but it's constantly changing during your life in response to your behavior " said Zewdi Tsegai, an assistant professor of organismal biology and anatomy at UChicago and senior author of the study. " So, we're using this plasticity of the skeleton to try to understand how living people vary and then taking that back to fossils to reconstruct behavior. "

Hannah Farrell, Ph.D. '24, who is now on the faculty at UNT Health Fort Worth, led the study, which was published in the Journal of Anatomy. She and her colleagues focused on trabecular bone, the spongy latticework of tissue inside the ends of bones.

Trabecular bone provides structural support and shock absorption while keeping the skeleton lightweight. Importantly for this study, it also changes in response to physical forces from behaviors like walking, running, jumping or climbing to realign its internal struts and offer more support.

" You can think of it like the Eiffel Tower, where it has all these struts and lattices to provide a very rigid structure " Farrell said. " But the trabeculae are also preferentially reoriented throughout life to continue to provide that same support as the individual faces loading from different behaviors. "

Farrell and her teammates used high-resolution micro-CT scanning to analyze ankle bones from collections of skeletons. The first group consisted of 40 individuals who regularly wore shoes.

A second group included 13 skeletons of habitually unshod Indigenous people from the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean, two individuals from southern Africa and one individual from Central Africa, provided by the Natural History Museum in London.

The researchers focused on the talus bone—a central, weight-bearing bone in the ankle that connects the lower leg to the foot. The modern, shod individuals had more trabecular bone in the back of the talus, suggesting that people wearing shoes tend to put more weight on the back of this bone, perhaps from the higher angle of the heel created by shoes.

Modern shoe-wearers also had more trabecular bone on the inside of the talus toward the big toe, hinting at how shoes redistribute weight.

Southern Africa has one of the most detailed and elaborate bodies of rock art anywhere in the world, from herds of running antelope to dancing men and humanoid beings with wings, hooves and horns. All are painted with fine brushstrokes or fingers. One thing this art lacks is stencils.

Now, a new study has identified the first-ever stenciled rock art in all of southern Africa. What makes it doubly unusual is that it was made from a template rather than an existing object, which is rare even on a global scale.

" I wasn't entirely sure what I was looking at for a while " said David Pearce, a rock art researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand. " Then they popped into focus, a bit like optical illusions do. "

The study, by Pearce and Cambridge archaeologist Kiah Johnson, is published in the South African Archaeological Bulletin.

A woman who lived near the Pyrenees around 30,000 years ago carried evidence of connections reaching far beyond her region. Most of her ancestry resembled that of western European hunter-gatherers. Another component linked her to populations associated with central and eastern Europe, revealing a more connected Ice Age landscape than earlier genetic evidence suggested.

An international team led by the University of Vienna reported the findings in Science Advances. Researchers combined new genetic data from three people with previously published genomes and human DNA recovered from Spanish cave sediment. Together, those sources show that long-distance genetic exchange could occur without replacing a region’s existing population ancestry.

The study concerns people associated with the Gravettian, an archaeological culture widespread across Europe roughly 34,000 to 25,000 years ago. Similar tools, artworks and burial practices had already suggested extensive contacts. The new evidence helps connect that cultural picture with the biological histories of people who lived through the period.

Mods of r/funny suggested this was a more appropriate sub for this post.

A genetic remnant of an ancient infection still helps determine whether a brain-development gene switches on in chimpanzee cells. Removing that viral DNA restored the gene’s activity in laboratory experiments. In human cells, where the insertion is absent, the same gene appears to help regulate how young nerve cells mature.

The findings, published in Science Advances by a team led from Lund University, connect an inherited viral sequence to differences in gene regulation. The gene, LINC00662, produces a long noncoding RNA, a molecule that functions without serving as instructions for a protein. Its activity distinguishes the human and chimpanzee neural models examined in the study.

The experiments identify a specific molecular difference, rather than a single explanation for human brain evolution. They combine genome comparisons, stem-cell models and gene editing to test a mechanism. Neither intelligence nor behavior was measured, and the work does not show that this insertion determines overall brain size.

Chinese scientists have identified the Xujiayao hominins, whose fossils were unearthed in North China’s Hebei Province, as Denisovans, a distinct branch of ancient humans, through palaeoproteomic analyses and morphological comparisons, revealing shared physical traits of Denisovans, a breakthrough in resolving a long-standing debate over the classification of archaic humans in East Asia during the late Middle Pleistocene, the Global Times learned from the research team on Wednesday. 

More than 30,000 years ago, people associated with one of Europe's major Paleolithic cultures (the Gravettian) were more interconnected than previously thought. An international research team led by the University of Vienna has uncovered new genetic evidence of long-distance connections between these populations.

Published in Science Advances, the study combines genomic data from rare human remains with human DNA preserved in cave sediments.

The Gravettian culture was widespread across Europe around 34,000 to 25,000 years ago. While archaeological finds have long suggested extensive contacts across the continent, genetic data pointed to relatively stable eastern and western ancestry groups.

By analyzing new and previously published genomic data alongside human DNA from cave sediments, the researchers found evidence of east-west genetic exchange and long-term population continuity in southwestern Europe.

Open Version: https://archive.is/20261021165551/https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-03360-0

Archaeologists identified skulls from China as belonging to this group of ancient human relatives.

A low, sloping forehead, a massive brow ridge that curves backwards, rectangle-like eye sockets, flat cheeks, and a moderately elevated bridge of the nose. Taken together, these features are the hallmarks of the ancient humans called the Denisovans, say researchers who studied a trove of fossilized skulls, teeth and jaws found in northern China.

“We are finally starting to put a face to the Denisovan,” says Sally Wasef, a palaeogeneticist at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.

Denisovans were first described in 2010, after researchers sequenced genetic material from a mysterious finger bone discovered in a cave in Siberia and found that it did not resemble that of Homo sapiens or Neanderthals.

Ancient proteins have since been used to identify remains from other parts of Asia as Denisovan, including the first near-complete Denisovan skull found near Harbin, which helped put a face on the ancient humans.

Researchers report in Nature1 today that they have an even better idea of what Denisovans looked like after analysing the physical features of remains that belong to a collection of 20 fossils found in Xujiayao.

The Xujiayao remains are at least 130,000 years old and were found in the 1970s, alongside animal remains and tools. At the time, it was unclear what type of human these fossils belonged to, and they were classified as a species called Homo juluensis.

By analysing ancient proteins from some of the fossils, Qiaomei Fu, a geneticist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, and her team identified the remains as Denisovan.

Wasef says ancient protein analysis is a valuable tool to complement DNA studies, particularly because proteins can survive longer than can DNA without fully degrading. Although DNA provides more detailed information about an individual, protein analysis can still yield useful information about who an individual is related to.

Fabrice Demeter, a palaeoanthropologist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, says the findings add to growing evidence that Denisovans were a widespread and potentially diverse group of humans.

“The study represents a major step forward” in our understanding of what these humans could have looked like and where they lived.

Six hand bones from Abauntz Cave in northern Spain are the first Neanderthal remains ever identified in the region of Navarre. They belonged to an adult male who lived about 46,000 years ago, and they still contain ancient DNA.

The presentation of six fossils from Abauntz Cave, in Arraitz-Orkin (in the Ultzama valley). Together they make up part of a Neanderthal hand. The fossils were unveiled at the Casa del Concejo, the village council house of Arraitz, at an event led by Navarre’s regional president, María Chivite.

The project’s two co-directors were there as well: Dr. Andion Arteaga, a researcher at the University of Warsaw’s Centre of New Technologies who is also associated with IPHES-CERCA, a Catalan institute devoted to human evolution, and Dr. Mikel Arlegi, a postdoctoral researcher at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris.

According to the institute’s press release, the bones were recovered a couple of excavation seasons ago, and a new season is under way now.

The Terracotta Army near Xi'an, China, is a breathtaking sight: thousands of life-size terracotta figures created in the third century B.C. to guard the tomb of Emperor Qin Shihuang. They were discovered in 1974, and people have assumed they were built exclusively by men. But new research on this underground army and its chariots, horses and weapons suggests women and children lent a helping hand.

The Levantine hominin fossil and archaeological records have played a central role in long-standing palaeoanthropological debates over origin models and possible interbreeding between Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) and Homo sapiens.

Recent research has provided a strong framework for the morphological expectations of recent hybrid ancestry in primates, along with renewed suggestions that early Late Pleistocene hominins from the Levant show morphological evidence of hybridization.

Here the research address these developments by using established diagnostic features of H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis to review possible fossil evidence of hybridization from the key Levantine sites of Qafzeh, Skhūl, and Tabūn.

The researchers conclude that, while individuals from these sites show a perplexing combination of characteristics that broadly overlap with expectations of hybridization, this explanation can only be established once other alternatives have been ruled out, or through the recovery of genetic material from these key fossils.

Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of a Neanderthal whose life came to a brutal end 75,000 years ago when a sharpened wooden spear plunged into the individual’s chest in one of the earliest known examples of a possible homicide.

A neat, circular hole in the hominin’s shoulder blade suggested the weapon penetrated the chest, traveling through the lung and major arteries before punching the hole in the bone. It likely killed the Neanderthal instantly or shortly after, according to a study in the journal Scientific Reports published on Thursday.

But the archaeologists who excavated the new skeletal fragments from Shanidar Cave in Iraq say the fossils weave a complex tale of Neanderthal life and death, beyond what appeared to be deliberate violence.