Features

Orrorin tugenensis: The Millennium Man and the Origins of Bipedalism

Discovered in 2000 in Kenya's Tugen Hills, 6-million-year-old Orrorin tugenensis plunges us into the origins of human bipedalism and the oldest debate in paleoanthropology.

Australopithecus anamensis: Lucy's Ancestor and the Oldest Confirmed Australopith

4.2 million years ago, the oldest confirmed australopith already walked the Kenyan savanna. Discover Australopithecus anamensis and the complete skull that reshapes our understanding of its origins.

Paranthropus: The Robust Australopiths and Their Evolutionary Dead End

Paranthropus boisei and robustus thrived in Africa for over a million years with their massive jaws and giant molars. Discover the Nutcracker Man and the fate of these specialized hominins.

Prehistory

Upper Pleistocene: Neanderthals and Sapiens, the Great Encounter (130,000 to 40,000 Years Ago)

For millennia, two humanities coexisted on the same continent: Neanderthals, masters of Europe for 200,000 years, and Homo sapiens, freshly arrived from Africa. Between 130,000 and 40,000 years ago, they may have exchanged goods, reproduced together, and developed the first symbolic behaviours. Then one disappeared. This dossier traces this encounter through morphology, Mousterian culture, the first burials, migration routes and the genetic revolution that revealed 2% Neanderthal DNA in our genomes.

Australopithecus sediba: South Africa's Missing Link?

Discovered in 2008 by a 9-year-old boy at Malapa Cave, Australopithecus sediba reshapes the human evolutionary tree with its unique mosaic anatomy, halfway between australopith and Homo.

Homo georgicus: The First Human Outside Africa

At Dmanisi in Georgia, five skulls aged 1.8 million years revolutionize the history of human evolution. Discover the oldest hominins ever found outside Africa.

Homo ergaster: Africa's Ancestor of the Upright Man

1.9 million years ago, Homo ergaster redefined human evolution: modern body proportions, enlarged brain, Acheulean handaxes. Discover the Turkana Boy and the revolution he represents.

Hominins

Homo erectus: The First World Conqueror, from Africa to Java

For 1.8 million years, Homo erectus colonised three continents, invented the Acheulean handaxe, tamed fire, and cared for its elderly. This dossier traces the history of the most long-lived human species: its discoveries, anatomy, migrations, and the mysteries it still poses.

Prehistory

Homo floresiensis: the Hobbit of Flores, the Smallest Known Human

In 2004, the discovery in Liang Bua Cave on Flores (Indonesia) of an adult hominin standing 106 cm tall with a 380 cm3 brain overturned palaeoanthropology. Named Homo floresiensis, the Hobbit is neither a pathological dwarf nor a myth: it is a fully distinct species, the result of island dwarfism on an island isolated for millions of years. This dossier traces its discovery, anatomy, tools, the pathology controversy, the 2016 chronological revision, and its place in a genus Homo tree far more complex than previously imagined.