Ancient microbes likely produced natural products their descendants today do not. Tapping into this lost chemical diversity could offer a potential source of new drugs.
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Articles on Pleistocene
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What climate changes in the distant past can tell us about the near future.
The ancient cave paintings have only begun to tell us about the lives of the earliest people who lived in Australasia. The art is disappearing just as we are beginning to understand its significance.
It appears that the South African Cape south coast’s dunes and beaches formed a vast canvas of sand on which our ancestors could leave their mark.
Several theories have suggested either humans, climate change or both drove megafauna extinctions in Southeast Asia. Our newest work suggests otherwise.
One avian track, probably made by a large gull or a small goose, was found in sediments that have been dated to about 400,000 years. That makes it the oldest avian track reported from southern Africa.
The historical record is full of surprises – and it could encourage conservationists to think more creatively.
Overhunting of megafauna such as mammoths may have force us to take up farming, ultimately leading to modern society
The rise and fall of monkeys in ancient Europe should remind us of our own species’ precarious relationship with changing climates.
Given that we know humans moved across these landscapes, we wondered whether there might also be evidence of other forms of human activity on these surfaces of sand.
The Indian summer monsoon rainfall affects the lives of over a billion people. By looking at how prehistoric climate changes affected it, scientists can contribute to its future prediction.
A 20-year-old experiment is testing whether filling the Arctic tundra with animals could keep carbon trapped in the ground.
Fossils of a whale thought to be found only in southern waters have been discovered at two sites in the northern hemisphere.
A team of archaeologists strived to improve the reproducibility of their results, influencing their choices in the field, in the lab and during data analysis.
Large birds once lived across Australia, only to become extinct around the time that giant marsupials and other megafauna died out during the Pleistocene “ice ages”.
Top contributors
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Research Associate, African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience, Nelson Mandela University
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Professor, University of Wollongong
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Professor, Griffith University
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Professor, Griffith University
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Associate Professor, Vertebrate Palaeontology Group, Flinders University
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Associate Professor of Archaeology, University of Washington
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Senior Lecturer in Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences at the University of Bath, University of Bath
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Researcher, Flinders University
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Professor, Flinders University
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Curator Vertebrates, Te Papa Tongarewa
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Professor of Climate Science, University of Bristol
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Senior Lecturer in Ocean Biogeochemistry, The Open University
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Senior Curator, Vertebrate Palaeontology, Museums Victoria
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Senior Lecturer, Geography and Environmental Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle
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Associate Professor of Anthropology, Harvard University
