ScienceDaily: Fossils & Ruins News

How did people living in the Bronze Age manage their finances before money became widespread? Researchers ave discovered that bronze scrap found in hoards in Europe circulated as a currency. These pieces of scrap -- which might include swords, axes, and jewellery broken into pieces -- were used as cash in the late Bronze Age, and in fact complied with a weight system used across Europe.

In the 150 years since Charles Darwin speculated that humans originated in Africa, the number of species in the human family tree has exploded, but so has the level of dispute concerning early human evolution. A new review looks at the major discoveries in hominin origins since Darwin's works and argues that fossil apes can inform us about essential aspects of ape and human evolution, including the nature of our last common ancestor.

If paleontologists had a wish list, it would almost certainly include insights into two particular phenomena: how dinosaurs interacted with each other and how they began to fly.

The cerebellum -- a part of the brain once recognized mainly for its role in coordinating movement -- underwent evolutionary changes that may have contributed to human culture, language and tool use, according to a new study.

The identity of the skeletal remains of a member of the 1845 Franklin expedition has been confirmed using DNA and genealogical analyses by a team of researchers.

A new study provides the earliest evidence to date of ancient humans significantly altering entire ecosystems with flames. The study combines archaeological evidence -- dense clusters of stone artifacts dating as far back as 92,000 years ago -- with paleoenvironmental data on the northern shores of Lake Malawi in eastern Africa to document that early humans were ecosystem engineers.

The first civilisations to build monumental palaces and urban centres in Europe are more genetically homogenous than expected, according to genomes gathered from archaeological sites around the Aegean. Individuals from the northern Aegean were considerably different by the Middle Bronze Age, sharing half their ancestry with people from the Pontic-Caspian steppe. These populations were highly similar to present-day Greeks. This supports theories that Proto-Greek and Indo-European languages originated in Anatolia or the Pontic-Caspian Steppe region.

Over the years, physicians and historians have attributed Shackleton's failing health during his Antarctic expeditions to scurvy or a congenital heart defect. By studying other explorers and learning they had symptoms comparable to those of Shackleton, researchers concluded that beriberi provided a sound scientific and medical explanation for the famed explorer's health struggles.

A team of scientists has discovered the fossil of an organism with two distinct cell types that is likely the oldest of its kind ever recorded -- revealing multicellularity perhaps 400 million years before it first appeared in animals, they report. The discovery in the Scottish Highlands suggests that cell differentiation and segregation occurred at least one billion years ago and may have occurred in freshwater lakes rather than the ocean.

CT scanning used to uncover remnants of malignancy hidden inside medieval bones provides new insight into cancer prevalence in a pre-industrial world.