HS-LS4-1
Communicate scientific information that common ancestry and biological evolution are supported by multiple lines of empirical evidence.
- Animals
How the house mouse found its home
Once people started settling down 15,000 years ago, a mouse species followed them indoors. The animals didn’t need people to be farming and storing food.
- Fossils
Fossils offer new candidate for earliest life
Rock unearthed in Canada appears to hold fossils from seafloor microbes that would have lived around 4 billion years ago, when Earth was very young.
- Science & Society
Fossils point to Neandertal diets — and medicine use
Whether Neandertals were largely meat-eaters or vegans depended on their environment, fossils now suggest. Their teeth also indicate they used natural medicines.
- Fossils
Dinosaur tail preserved in amber — feathers and all
Scientists have found the tail of a dinosaur trapped in amber. It includes both feathers and identifiable bits of bone.
- Fossils
Speckled dino spurs debate about ancient animals’ colors
Structures found in fossil dinosaur skin may give clues to the creatures’ colors and how they lived. But not all scientists agree on how to interpret what they see.
- Fossils
Dino brain found ‘pickled’ in boggy swamp
Scientists claim to have identified the first fossil brain tissue from a dinosaur.
- Genetics
Human DNA carries hints of unknown extinct ancestor
A new study suggests people today carry genetic traces of now-extinct species unknown to science.
- Climate
Globe’s non-Africans all descend from a single move out of Africa
Look back far enough and everybody’s ancestors were African no more than 72,000 years ago. Climate scientists would up that date to perhaps 100,000 years ago.
- Life
Surprising primate fossils found in an Indian coal mine
Bones of a 54.5-million-year-old primate suggest India might have been a hotbed of early primate evolution.
- Fossils
Mini pterosaur from the age of flying giants
Not all pterosaurs flying the Cretaceous skies had a wingspan as wide as a school bus is long. Some, new fossils show, were smaller than modern eagles.
- Fossils
These may be the oldest fossils on Earth
Some mini mounds in Greenland may just be the earliest evidence of life on Earth, deposited a mere 800,000 years after our planet first formed.
- Archaeology
‘Cousin’ Lucy may have fallen from a tree to her death 3.2 million years ago
A contested study suggests that Lucy, a famous fossil ancestor of humans, fell from a tree to her death.
