ScienceDaily: Fossils & Ruins News

Scientists reveal clues about the evolutionary origin of jaws by studying the embryonic development of zebrafish -- an approach known as 'evo-devo.' Using imaging and cell tracing techniques in zebrafish, researchers who conducted the study conclusively showed that the pseudobranch originates from the same mandibular arch that gives rise to the jaw.

For decades, scientists have studied these fossils of early human ancestors and their long-lost relatives. Now, a dating method developed by geologists just pushed the age of some of these fossils found at the site of Sterkfontein Caves back more than a million years. This would make them older than Dinkinesh, also called Lucy, the world's most famous Australopithecus fossil.

Researchers have discovered the first viruses infecting a group of microbes that may include the ancestors of all complex life. The discovery offers tantalizing clues about the origins of complex life and suggests new directions for exploring the hypothesis that viruses were essential to the evolution of humans and other complex life forms.

Using light-capturing proteins in living microbes, scientists helped reconstruct what life was like for some of Earth's earliest organisms. These efforts could help us one day recognize signs of life on other planets.

Scientists reveal an advanced, innovative method that they have developed and used to detect nonvisual traces of fire dating back at least 800,000 years -- one of the earliest known pieces of evidence for the use of fire. The newly developed technique may provide a push toward a more scientific, data-driven type of archaeology, but -- perhaps more importantly -- it could help us better understand the origins of the human story, our most basic traditions and our experimental and innovative nature.

The 'missing link' between bacterial cells and human and plant cells offers key to the process of eukaryogenesis, the point at which animal and plant cells diverge from bacteria.