news 2026

The arrival of substantial numbers of early human ancestors ( Homo erectus) in the Southeast Asian prehistoric landmass of Sundaland, approximately 1.8 million years ago, likely triggered an evolutionary shift in Leucosphyrus mosquitoes, according to a new study. Researchers from The University of Manchester suggest that during the Early Pleistocene, the arrival and presence of these early hominins drove the mosquitoes to adapt to feeding on humans.

A research team led by Dr. Márton Rabi from the Biogeology Department of the University of , together with Máté Szegszárdi and Professor Attila Osi from the Hungarian Eötvös Loránd University, is challenging the hypothesis that Europe remained connected to Africa during the age of the dinosaurs.

An international team of researchers say a newly discovered fossil thighbone from Bulgaria could rewrite the history of human origins. Walking on two legs has long been considered a milestone in human evolution and one of our most defining characteristics. Until now, researchers assumed that the first humans originated in Africa and that bipedalism developed there around six million years ago.

New research from the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) has revealed that when dinosaurs leapt into the air, they may have used their tails as well as their legs. The study concludes that long-tailed, bipedal carnivores (like Velociraptor ) could have powered higher jumps by swinging their massive tails - a strategy that was later lost as birds evolved shorter tails and had to adopt different jumping techniques.

Researchers have identified a 'tipping point' about 2.7 million years ago when global climate conditions switched from being relatively warm and stable to cold and chaotic, as continental ice sheets expanded in the northern hemisphere. Following this transition, Earth's climate began swinging back and forth between warm interglacial periods and frigid ice ages, linked to slow, cyclic changes in Earth's orbit.

Documented for 200 years, the Iguanodontia group is expanding with the discovery of a brand-new species, the first known to bear spikes with properties never before observed in dinosaurs. Scientists from the CNRS 1 and their international partners have uncovered in China the fossilised skin of an exceptionally well preserved juvenile iguanodon.

An international team has described Foskeia pelendonum , a tiny Early Cretaceous ornithopod from Vegagete (Burgos, Spain), measuring barely half a meter long.

At the Bromacker fossil site in Germany, an international team including a CNRS scientist 1 has identified the oldest terrestrial fossilised vomit known so far. Dated to around 290 million years ago (Early Permian), several tens of millions of years before dinosaurs appeared, this fossilised vomit, or "regurgitalite," contains numerous partially digested bone fragments, including those of two small reptiles and an amphibian 2 , preserved in a phosphate-poor matrix 3 .

A photograph of a second Jamoytius specimen, again with a zinc X-ray map overlain at top, where the eye structure is visible but less well preserved. In this specimen the body scales were also preserved and when mapped for the elements calcium (bottom left) and phosphorous (bottom right) the scales are shown to have the same chemistry as bone.

An international team led by researchers from Universities of and Reading and Senckenberg Nature Research Society has discovered the earliest known hand-held wooden tools used by humans. A study jointly led by Professor Katerina Harvati from the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of and Annemieke Milks at University of Reading describes discoveries from the Marathousa 1 site in Greece-s central Peloponnese which date back 430,000 years.

Scientists studying the fossil remains of giant prehistoric kangaroos have found that even animals weighing more than 200kg may not have been too big to bounce, overturning long-held assumptions about the limits of hopping. Today, the red kangaroo is the largest living hopping animal and weighs around 90kg.

A remarkable prehistoric hammer made from elephant bone, dating back nearly half a million years ago, has been uncovered in southern England and analysed by archaeologists from UCL and the Natural History Museum, London. It is the oldest elephant bone tool to ever be discovered in Europe and provides an extraordinary glimpse into the ingenuity of the early human ancestors who made it.