The naming of Australopithecus africanus in 1925, based on the Taung Child, heralded a
new era in human evolutionary studies and turned the attention of the then Eurasian-centric …

Abstract The Afar Depression is a unique place on Earth where active rift processes can be
directly observed. It is believed to be close to continental breakup. The Afar hotspot has a …

The oldest Oldowan tool sites, from around 2.6 million years ago, have previously been
confined to Ethiopia's Afar Triangle. We describe sites at Nyayanga, Kenya, dated to 3.032 …

The manufacture of flaked stone artifacts represents a major milestone in the technology of
the human lineage. Although the earliest production of primitive stone tools, predating the …

It has recently become clear that several human lineages coexisted with Homo sapiens
during the late Middle and Late Pleistocene. Here, we report an archaic human fossil that …

Abstract The Late Pleistocene Campanian Ignimbrite (CI) super-eruption (Southern Italy) is
the largest known volcanic event in the Mediterranean area. The CI tephra is widely …

Our understanding of the origin of the genus Homo has been hampered by a limited fossil
record in eastern Africa between 2.0 and 3.0 million years ago (Ma). Here we report the …

The rewards from resolving the tempo of magmatic, paleobiologic, paleoclimatic, and
tectonic processes at better than the per mil level of precision have spurred a quest within …

The Sahara is the largest hot desert on Earth. Yet the timing of its inception and its response
to climatic forcing is debated, leading to uncertainty over the causes and consequences of …

People of the Earth is a narrative account of the prehistory of humankind from our origins
over 3 million years ago to the first pre-industrial civilizations, beginning about 5,000 years …