Homo habilis ("handy man") is an extinct species of archaic human from the Early Pleistocene of East and South Africa about 2.3–1.65 million years ago (mya). Upon species description in 1964, H.

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Scientists now recognize more than a dozen species in the Homo genus. So what, exactly, was the first human species? The answer, ...

Between 2 million and 3 million years ago, humans appeared in Africa — but identifying them in the fossil record is turning ...

The bones were found in a cave near Johannesburg, South Africa, and they’ve since been hailed as one of the most important fossil finds of the century. Australopithecus sediba is now believed to have ...

A new study of early human ancestors who lived millions of years ago suggests that they were largely vegetarian, despite the fact that stone tools and cut animal bones have been found from that same ...

Childbirth was difficult and dangerous for our ape-like ancestors, much as it is for women today. A new study of the pelvises of Australopithecus suggests that labour exerted powerful forces on their ...

The cranium of the juvenile skeleton of Australopithecus sediba.Brett Eloff / Courtesy of Lee Berger and the University of Witwatersrand One August day in 2008, a pair of nine-year-old boys crossed ...

Far up in the Ethiopian highlands, the resounding strike of stone against stone was probably a familiar one two million years ago. Ancient hominids chipped away to create simple tools: hammerstones ...