If we restrict the use of Homo sapiens in the fossil record to specimens which share a
significant number of derived features in the skeleton with extant H. sapiens, the origin of our …

The species Homo heidelbergensis is central to many discussions about recent human
evolution. For some workers, it was the last common ancestor for the subsequent species …

Despite broad agreement that Homo sapiens originated in Africa, considerable uncertainty
surrounds specific models of divergence and migration across the continent. Progress is …

Neandertals, the closest evolutionary relatives of present-day humans, lived in large parts of
Europe and western Asia before disappearing 30,000 years ago. We present a draft …

Western Eurasia yielded a rich Middle (MP) and Late Pleistocene (LP) fossil record
documenting the evolution of the Neandertals that can be analyzed in light of recently …

Rare mutations of the FOXP2 transcription factor gene cause a monogenic syndrome
characterized by impaired speech development and linguistic deficits. Recent genomic …

Any account of “what is special about the human brain”(Passingham 2008) must specify the
neural basis of our unique ability to produce speech and delineate how these remarkable …

Although an African origin of the modern human species is generally accepted, the
evolutionary processes involved in the speciation, geographical spread, and eventual …

Macroevolutionary biologists have classically rejected the notion that higher-level patterns of
divergence arise through microevolutionary processes acting within populations. For …

The study of cranial variation has a long, and somewhat difficult, history within anthropology.
Much of this difficulty is rooted in the historical use of craniometric data to justify essentialist …