Early humans evolved in ecosystems unlike any found today

October 7, 2019

To understand the environmental pressures that shaped human evolution, scientists must first piece together the details of the ancient plant and animal communities that our fossil ancestors lived in over the past 7 million years. Because putting together the puzzle of millions-of-years-old ecosystems is a difficult task, many studies have reconstructed the environments by drawing […]



Wildfire begets fire adaptation

October 18, 2018

As wildfires burn across the western United States, people are asking why does the West burn so frequently? Was it like this in the past? To piece together ancient landscapes, paleoecologists act like biological sleuths by digging through layers of sediment in search of clues. Traditionally, they analyzed pollen grains to infer what types of […]



Scientists discover evidence of early human innovation, pushing back evolutionary timeline

March 15, 2018

An international collaboration, including the Natural History Museum of Utah at the University of Utah, has discovered that early humans in eastern Africa had—by about 320,000 years ago—begun trading with distant groups, using color pigments and manufacturing more sophisticated tools than those of the Early Stone Age. These newly discovered activities approximately date to the […]