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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.

Among sharks and rays, species within the first four million years of existence are significantly more likely to go extinct than older species, according to a study led by researchers from the University of Zurich based on fossils from the last 145 million years. This shows that in addition to environmental stressors, the evolutionary age of species also plays a crucial role in their survival.

An international research team led by Christoph Spötl from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, has compiled an extraordinary climate reconstruction based on data from a cave in Nevada, USA. The study provides unique insights into the climate history of one of the driest regions in North America - and shows how closely temperature, water availability, and vegetation are linked in arid regions.

Professor Lluís Gibert, from the University of Barcelona, is the only expert from a European institution participating in an international study based on the analysis of the bones of a fossilized foot and teeth that has revealed how Australopithecus deyiremeda , a human ancestor that coexisted more than three million years ago with Australopithecus afarensis - the famous Lucy - on the plains of East Africa, moved and fed.

It has long been known that pterosaurs and birds acquired their ability to fly independently of each other. A new study has now revealed that there are no major similarities between the brains of ptero-saurs, which lived around 215 million to 66 million years ago, and those of today's birds; however, there are similarities with the brains of bird ancestors - certain species of dinosaurs that were unable to fly or had limited flying ability.

The study of an assemblage of Neandertal human bones discovered in the Troisième caverne of Goyet (Belgium) has brought to light selective cannibalistic behaviour primarily targeting female adults and children between 41,000 and 45,000 years ago.

New research offers a unique insight into the lives of mammoths during the last Ice Age. Scientists have taken an important step closer to understanding the mythical mammoths that roamed the Earth thousands of years ago. For the first time ever, a research team has succeeded in isolating and sequencing RNA molecules from woolly mammoths dating back to the Ice Age.

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Study of a 19th-century fossil reveals that woolly mammoths once lived much further east than previously thought A badly damaged mammoth tooth discovered almost 150 years ago on an island in Nunavut provides new insights into where these Ice Age giants lived and died. A study conducted by McGill University has led to the reclassification of the specimen, discovered in 1878.