#Voyager found that 75% of the #CosmicRays heading our way from #InterstellarSpace 🌌 get filtered out in the #heliosphere’s outer reaches. If the encounter with the next cloud squeezes the heliosphere all the way down to #Earth’s #orbit, life forms would be exposed to an intense #radiation environment that would riddle #DNA 🧬 with mutations. There’s evidence of such an event around the time early #hominids were just beginning to pick up stone tools https://www.science.org/content/article/voyager-steroids-mission-probe-mysterious-region-beyond-solar-system

#DeepSpace #Research

“Researchers have managed the incredible feat of predicting genetic relationships between some of the earliest hominins to live on planet Earth, using little more than some proteins scraped from 2 million year old fossilized teeth.” #isogg #dna #ancientdna #hominids #geneadons
https://www.sciencealert.com/ancient-outsider-human-species-pinpointed-in-oldest-genetic-study-yet

Brain expansion in early hominins predicts carnivore extinctions in East Africa

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7079157/ #hominidae #hominids #hominins #brainexpansion #carnivora

"...monkeys make stone flakes that look an awful lot like the flakes that scientists have attributed to ancient human..."

#paleontology #hominids #archeology

https://gizmodo.com/macaques-make-stone-flakes-that-look-like-human-tools-1850212505?

And now a gratuitous clip of the Simpsons version of Planet of the Apes

https://youtu.be/ZqZdfxc-fq0

Not addressed in this (interesting) article but it made me wonder if this is what spurred the original manufacture of stone tools. ie #hominids realising how useful their accidental stone flakes were and attempting to make them deliberately.

#archeology (?)

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/monkey-stone-flakes-ancient-hominid-tools

#TIL the oversized ape King Louie in #Disney's most recent live action version of #TheJungleBook is not actually supposed to be an #orangutan but a remnant #gigantopithecus. This explains the character's baffling size as well as the fact that orangutans aren't native to India.

https://animals.howstuffworks.com/extinct-animals/extinct-giant-orangutan-gigantopithecus-jungle-book.htm

#movies #DisneyMovies #animation #hominids #paleontology #anthropology #paleoanthropology #biology #animals

Denisovan - Ancient Human - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s19s3MH6sTQ

#Hominids #Evolution

AAAS" "Neandertals lived in groups big enough to eat giant elephants" 'On the muddy shores of a lake in east-central Germany, Neanderthals gathered some 125,000 years ago to butcher massive elephants.' Using sharp stone tools, they harvested up to 4 tons of flesh from each male 'straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus), an extinct species almost twice the size of modern African elephants that stood nearly 4 meters tall at the shoulder.' One implication is Neanderthals formed much larger social groups than previously assumed. Archeological work began in the 1980s with bones + tools from a sprawling site dating to the Eemian interglacial, which lasted from 130,000 to 150,000 yrs ago, some 75,000 yrs before modern humans arrived in Wetern Europe. Microscopically, almost all of of the bones showed gouges + scratches, plus they were not gnawed by scavengers such as wolves or hyenas, suggesting they were stripped bare. The amount of meat from a single kill 'would have been enough to feed 350 people for a week, or 100 people for a month.' The hunters probably singled out adult males, which roamed without the protection of a female-led herd. Perhaps the hominids had a large, seasonal gathering, or perhaps they were storing food — or both. Recall Homo neanderthalensis + Homo sapiens intermixed genetically after they converged. #hominids #elephants

For the last time: Dinofelis did NOT eat hominids. This myth was put to rest a few years back but for some reason, it keeps being resurrected online. This article is particularly enlightening https://www.maropeng.co.za/news/entry/dinofelis_hominid_hunter_or_misunderstood_feline #dinofelis #hominids

Interestingly, years before the publication of this article, the late Credo Mutwa told the conservationist Linda Tucker that the predominant belief in Dinofelis being specialised in hunting and killing hominids for consumption was "poppycock" #CredoMutwa

Fascinating evolutionary stage of proto-man interacting with nature to make stone tools 1.2 million years ago.

“Following the deposition of an accumulation of obsidian cobbles by a meandering river, hominins began to exploit these in new ways, producing large tools with sharp cutting edges,” Mussi and her colleagues said in the study.

#Paleolithic
#HandAxe
#Hominids

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7zx77/archaeologists-discover-12-million-year-old-workshop-in-mind-blowing-find

When Did Hominids First Leave Africa? - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9btN6H7H3Rg

#History #Prehistory #Hominids #Evolution

I love these bronze #Hominids at NMNH, sculpted by John Gurche. The fact that they’re life-sized, tactile, and in the same space as visitors makes these beings seem so much more real. #museums #exhibits

Pretty remarkable research...human might not have been the first hominid to sail upon the seas.

Homo Erectus (and other #hominids) may have been sailing on the #Mediterranean between 130,000 and 450,000 years ago! 🤯

#evolution #science

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2022-12-15/ty-article/hominins-were-sailing-the-mediterranean-half-a-million-years-ago-study-finds/00000185-1590-dcb5-abe7-dfbe1b5c0000

Human ancestors may have sailed across the Aegean Sea

https://phys.org/news/2022-12-human-ancestors-aegean-sea.html

#archeology #hominids

The canonical phylogeny of #Hominids in the #MarkAHalliverse (13/?) is a bit… non-standard. Anyone into #Paleoanthropology may need to exercise caution, this phylogeny gets more perplexing the more I look at it…

#ScienceMastodon, seeking your help. This article about #TreeShrews is behind a hard paywall. I'm not lettered; I'm just reading as much as I can about the #EvolutionaryHistory of #primates and especially #hominids.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/introducing-the-treeshrews
*

Did Home Erectus in Australia predate the arrival of Aboriginal Australians from India?

Who else? Floriensis, Denisoven, Neanderthals?

#Aboriginal #FirstAustraliana #Homoerectus #KowSwamp #hominids #ancienthistory

https://www.academia.edu/resource/work/21537455

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fossils-upend-conventional-wisdom-about-evolution-of-human-bipedalism/
#evolution #hominids The more we find out the the more interesting evolution becomes. The number of species seems to expand with every new find

Hi kolektiva! I just migrated here from an old mastodon.social account, which I hadn't really been using. Am part of the big birdapp migration.

My #introduction, with an alarming number of hashtags for searchability.

I'm an #activist / #communityOrganizer in local politics, especially around topics of #antiracism & #acab & #trans rights.

Former software engineer, sidelined by lack of #disability access. I have chronic #migraine. I'm also #neurodivergent (#adhd, #actuallyAutistic).

I am obsessed with extinct #hominids (ok that one's never going to trend) and also primatology, especially #gorillas, #chimpanzees and #bonobos.

Study reveals striking differences in brains of #ModernHumans and #Neanderthals | Neanderthals | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/sep/08/study-reveals-striking-differences-in-brains-of-modern-humans-and-neanderthals

#Science #Biology #Evolution #Anthropology #Hominids