New fossils have provided a snapshot of proto-human diets during a critical evolutionary moment, when better fare helped our small-brained ancestors boost their cognitive capacity. Two-million-year-old bones that belonged to fish, crocodiles and turtles — aquatic animals rich in brain-fueling fatty acids — were found together with stone tool fragments near Kenya’s Lake Turkana. “We know that... 

May 19, 2009—Meet “Ida,” the small “missing link” found in Germany that’s created a big media splash and will likely continue to make waves among those who study human origins. In a new book, documentary, and promotional Web site, paleontologist Jorn Hurum, who led the team that analyzed the 47-million-year-old fossil seen above, suggests Ida is a critical missing-link... 

When human injection of carbon into the atmosphere reaches 1 trillion tons, dangerous climate change with average global warming of more than 2 Celsius degrees will likely occur, a new analysis finds. And humans are hurrying toward that 1 trillion mark. So far, We’ve added about 520 billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere. With the addition of an estimated 9 billion tons of carbon a year — a...