Humans, Study | featured news

A series of studies released today show that a long-extinct South African creature had an intriguing mix of human and apelike traits. But scientists say they still haven’t figured out where it fits on our evolutionary family tree. The human branch of the evolutionary tree, called Homo, is thought to have arisen from a group of ancient species called australopithecines. The newly studied species is a member of this group, and so its similarities to humans are enticing for tackling the riddle of how Homo appeared.

It could be the muffled sound of singing in the shower or that sing-songy indecipherable voice from the Muppets' Swedish Chef. Surprisingly, scientists said the audio they captured was a whale imitating people. In fact, the whale song sounded so eerily human that divers initially thought it was a human voice.

Some of the earliest Americans turn out to have been artists. A bone fragment at least 13,000 years old, with the carved image of a mammoth or mastodon, has been discovered in Florida, a new study reports. While prehistoric art depicting animals with trunks has been found in Europe, this may be the first in the Western Hemisphere, researchers report Wednesday in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Humans have long been advised to "know thyself," but new research suggests we may not know ourselves as well as we think we do. While individuals may be more accurate at assessing their own neurotic traits, such as anxiety, it seems friends, and even strangers, are often better barometers of traits such as intelligence, creativity and extroversion.

Could birth control pills be taking human evolution in a whole new, and possibly detrimental, direction?