Kristina Killgrove

Fifty years after a fossil skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis was unearthed in Ethiopia, we know so much more about how this iconic species lived and died.

Lucy lived in a wide range of habitats from northern Ethiopia to northern Kenya. Researchers now believe she wasn't the only australopithecine species there.

An analysis looking at the hand bones of australopithecines, apes and humans reveals that tool use likely evolved before the Homo genus arose.

Complicated births may not have arisen in humans as a trade-off between our need for big brains and pelvises suitable for upright walking, new research in chimps suggests.

A skeleton buried in a fetal position is actually made of bones from at least five people who lived across a span of 2,500 years.

At an Iron Age cemetery in Sweden, archaeologists discovered an unusual grave of a woman interred with an iron folding knife stuck into her burial.

Archaeologists in Sweden were expecting to find an ancient settlement, but they were surprised to discover a Viking Age cemetery with boat-shaped burial outlines.

It's possible that the wheel was invented by copper miners in the Carpathian Mountains up to 6,000 years ago, according to a modeling study that uses techniques from structural mechanics.

An ancient temple made by Arabian immigrants from the Nabataean culture has finally been found off the Italian coast near Naples.

Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of a Roman military structure in Turkey dating to the fourth century, when Emperor Constantius II ruled.

A new ecological model suggests Neanderthals and modern humans interbred in the Zagros Mountains in what is now Iran before going their separate ways 80,000 years ago.

Braving the cold weather required Neanderthals to have robust bodies and to know how to make fire. But did they wear clothes?

We don't know when the last Neanderthal died, but many archaeologists think some of the last lineages lived in southern Iberia.

A complex picture of how Neanderthals died out, and the role that modern humans played in their disappearance, is emerging.

An analysis of around a dozen teenagers who lived during the Paleolithic reveals that they hit puberty around the same time modern teens do.

Thorin — nicknamed after a dwarf in J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" — is also called the "last Neanderthal" because he may have lived as recently as 42,000 years ago.

Archaeologists in Bulgaria have discovered a medieval house that contained even older gold coins, which date to the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian the Great.

Archaeologists excavating Oslo's medieval harbor have unearthed the remnants of a 14th-century gauntlet.

The stone-lined tomb could provide an unprecedented look at life in Bronze Age England.

The discovery of butchered bones belonging to a glyptodont, a giant relative of the armadillo, suggests that humans were living in Argentina 20,000 years ago.

Archaeologists at Sutton Hoo, a 1,400-year-old boat burial in England, have discovered pieces of a broken bucket from the Byzantine Empire.

Archaeologists have discovered the homestead of Pompey, a formerly enslaved man from West Africa who was elected "king" by his community in the 1700s.

Aboriginal artifacts in Australia that were likely used for ritual spells may be evidence of the oldest culturally transmitted ritual on record.

A bridge that collapsed 2,000 years ago in what is now Switzerland may have fallen on Celtic sacrifice victims, a new study finds.

Easter Island never had a catastrophic population collapse, researchers propose in a new study that looks at archaeological rock gardens.