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Walking has taken a very long time to develop, with evidence of bipedalism among early humans in Africa roughly 4.4 million years ago.

Anthropologists gather clues about how our ancient ancestors lived from their teeth. What will future anthropologists make of us based on the fossilized pearly whites we’ll leave behind?

Two dental experts explain that these furthest-back molars may be a not-so-necessary leftover from early human evolution.

20 years ago, who could predict how much more researchers would know today about the human past – let alone what they could learn from a thimble of dirt, a scrape of dental plaque, or satellites in space.

Beyond the cool factor of figuring out hominin hearing capacities two million years ago, these findings could help answer the tantalizing question of when did human vocalized language first emerge.

A photo of Lucy’s reconstructed skeleton next to a live four-year-old girl shows how human Lucy was – and how small.

Reconstructions of human evolution are prone to simple, overly-tidy scenarios. Our ancestors, for example, stood on two legs to look over tall grass, or began to speak because, well, they finally had something…

Through fossilized tooth enamel, scientists are reconstructing the diets and landscapes that existed millions of years ago. We really are what we eat.

The way Lucy has been depicted in newspapers, textbooks and museums shows how today’s cultural norms influence perceptions of the past.

Stone tools excavated in Kenya date back 3.3 million years – making them about a million years older than the oldest known fossils from our own hominid genus Homo. Who made and used these tools?