A journey through Africa can be an incredibly impressive experience thanks to the presence of large animals. Many large animal species disappeared from North America, South America and Australia. Yet Africa still retains elephants, rhinos, giraffes and hippos. But why does Africa still have such a rich community of large animals, while North and South…

For the general public, Neanderthals are probably the best-known of all our human relatives. Yet they have long been burdened by an unflattering stereotype. Being called a “Neanderthal” is rarely meant as a compliment. Years ago, I had the opportunity to examine original Neanderthal skulls at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris. Among them was…

Humans have remarkably flat faces compared with the other living apes. As early as 1945, the anthropologist Franz Weidenreich noted in his book “Apes, Giants, and Man” striking similarities between the evolution of human skulls and the changes seen in domesticated dogs. In both cases, evolutionary change appeared to involve a relative enlargement of the…

During the Darwin Year in 2009, a sensational skull from Dmanisi (Georgia) was on display at Naturalis in Leiden, the Netherlands. Not a replica like the ones we often encounter in museums, but the original itself! The finds from Dmanisi are among the oldest known remains of the genus Homo outside Africa (about 1.77 million…