The geneticist’s accomplishments include sequencing Neanderthal DNA and leading the project that identified a new species of hominin, the Denisovans.

The paleoanthropologist was widely celebrated for his unmatched ability to find and identify fossils.

Coppens, alongside Donald Johanson and Maurice Taieb, found a 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis fossil in the 1970s.

The new fossil from Laos helps answer the question of how some people from Oceania carry DNA from the ancient hominin.

New techniques have shown that people reached the New World far earlier than the long-standing estimate of 13,000 years ago, but scientists still debate exactly when humans arrived on the continent—and how.

Diverse lines of evidence point to humans’ presence in the New World long before the dawn of Clovis culture. But rewriting this chapter of human history raises many questions about how these early people came to inhabit these continents.

Do members of Homo floresiensis still inhabit the Indonesian island where their fossils helped identify a new human species fewer than 20 years ago?

See some of the coolest images recently featured by The Scientist

The Kenyan fossil finder is known for his discoveries of various Stone Age artifacts and ancient human skulls and skeletons.

As the year draws to a close, we look back on researchers we bid farewell to, and the contributions they made to their respective fields.

Taieb recognized the potential importance of the Hadar Formation, where remains of the hominin Australopithecus afarensis were found only a few years later.

A massive, well-preserved skull discovered in China in the 1930s belongs to a new species called Homo longi, researchers report, but experts remain skeptical about the evidence.

Impressions that ancient brains left in fossilized skulls reveal that the first human ancestors to migrate out of Africa had much more primitive brains than previously thought.

A new analysis of the hand of the 4.4-million-year-old partial skeleton of Ardipithecus ramidus indicates that the human ancestor may have climbed and swung through trees like chimpanzees do.

Watch researchers travel to a cave deep in the Amazon to search for clues about the first humans to populate the Americas.

Watch Reading Frames author Peter Rhys-Evans and documentarian Sir David Attenborough discuss the book The Waterside Ape and the impact it may have on our understanding of human evolution.

In Chapter 11, “Surfer’s Ear,” author Peter Rhys-Evans describes a key piece of evidence he says supports his hypothesis of a brief period of semi-aquatic living in early hominins.

A recent book outlines fossil evidence supporting the controversial hypothesis.

For the past 10 years, life science has moved us closer to a complete understanding of what makes us human—our similarities, our differences, and our shared history.