Topic: Biological Anthropology

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Top 6 Super Bowl ads featuring animals (+video)

Super Bowl ads reflect a broader truism in advertising: A cute animal is a better pitchman than a human 9 times in 10 (Peyton Manning aside). Over the years, some of the most successful Super Bowl ads of all time have featured a wide array of animals, from mighty Clydesdales to lowly mosquitoes. Here is our countdown of six of the best ever fuzzy (and not so fuzzy) Super Bowl commercials, including a winner from Super Bowl XLVI. Did your all-time favorite take the top spot?
Bestselling books the week of 9/1/11, according to IndieBound*

What's selling best in independent bookstores across America.
In Pictures: Hobbits around the world
4 great books for 4-to-8-year-olds

Summer is rapidly approaching and soon young readers – just like their parents – will need engaging beach books. If you're looking for quality titles to keep 4-to-8-year-old readers in the page-turning mode all summer along, here are four good bets.
In Pictures: Space photos of the day: Fireworks

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Were pliable heads an adaptation to walking upright?

New research relates hominin brain growth to walking on two feet.
Was ancient crocodile world's largest?

Researchers have recently unearthed what they think may have been the biggest crocodile ever to have lived on Earth.
Did dinosaur 'emissions' help warm the prehistoric climate? (+video)

In a new study, scientists theorize that giant, vegetation-munching sauropods emitted nearly as much methane each year into the warm atmosphere as do all natural and industrial sources today.
Did a copying mistake give rise to human intelligence?

New research suggests that a copying error found in humans seems to distinguish human brains from those of primates.
Were early humans cooking their food a million years ago?

The discovery of million-year-old ash and charred bone in a South African cave suggests that human ancestors were using fire much earlier than previously thought.
Human ancestors used fire a million years ago, finds study

Ash and a charred bone unearthed in South Africa indicates that, even a million years ago, humanity's forebears had harnessed fire.
How did humans evolve to walk upright? Fossil discovery complicates the picture. (+video)

Foot bones unearthed recently in Ethiopia belonged to a contemporary of 'Lucy,' the 3.2-million-year-old early human discovered in 1974. But these bones seem to belong to a different species, one thought to have split its time between walking upright and climbing trees.
Fossil discovery could unravel mystery of how humans learned to walk (+video)

The discovery of foot bone fossils from an early hominin may help unlock the mystery of how humans learned to walk upright.
Fossil find sheds light on how humans evolved to walk (+video)

A discovery in Ethiopia of 3-million-year old foot bones that once belonged to a human relative suggests that human bipedalism evolved more than once.
New human species discovered? How China fossils could redefine 'human'

Scientists have recently dated and described fossils from what may be a new species of hominid, the Red Deer Cave people. The discovery could shed new light on emergence of humankind in East Asia.
Possible new human species unearthed in China

Scientists in China have found what may be a new species of human. Fossils show a group of people with similarities to and differences from modern humans.
Humans, gorillas more alike than previously thought, say scientists

Fifteen percent of humans and chimp DNA is closer to that to gorillas than to each other, a new study finds.
Gorillas are more like humans than we knew, study says

New research has shown that humans are more like gorillas than scientists previously understood. 15 percent of human DNA is more similar to gorillas than to chimps.
Humongous prehistoric fleas fed on dinosaurs, couldn't jump

Scientists have found fossils of giant, ancient fleas in China. Their large size, five to ten times that of today's fleas, likely helped them to feed on dinosaurs. But they lacked the leg strength of today's fleas.
World's tallest penguin used to live in New Zealand, fossils show

The tallest penguin species ever known used to call the South Pacific island nation home.
Change Agent
Tacugama gives sanctuary to chimpanzees - through war and peace

Even an 11-year civil war couldn't stop Bala Amarasekaran from rescuing and rehabilitating chimps in Sierra Leone.
Men not on verge of extinction, report scientists

A new study suggests that the Y chromosome, previously thought to be evolving into oblivion, will persist.
Top 6 Super Bowl ads featuring animals (+video)

Super Bowl ads reflect a broader truism in advertising: A cute animal is a better pitchman than a human 9 times in 10 (Peyton Manning aside). Over the years, some of the most successful Super Bowl ads of all time have featured a wide array of animals, from mighty Clydesdales to lowly mosquitoes. Here is our countdown of six of the best ever fuzzy (and not so fuzzy) Super Bowl commercials, including a winner from Super Bowl XLVI. Did your all-time favorite take the top spot?
Scientists reveal secret of humongous mammals

How did some mammals get so big? A new study calculates the rate at which mammals evolved from mouse-sized to elephant-sized.
Oldest dinosaur nursery includes eggs containing embryos

The newly unearthed clutches of eggs, many with embryos inside, belonged to a plant-eating dinosaur, the predecessor of the largest animals to ever walk the Earth, long-necked sauropods such as Brachiosaurus.
Dracula-esque monkey long thought vanished reappears

A team set up camera traps in Borneo in June, hoping to captures images of wildlife known to congregate at several mineral salt licks but the pictures that came back caught them all by surprise: groups of monkeys none had ever seen.
Change Agent
New guidelines show chimps are rarely needed for medical research

The National Institutes of Health issued new guidelines indicating that the use of chimpanzees to study diseases is rarely necessary.
Fossil find could solve lingering Antarctic dinosaur mystery

Scientists report unearthing a Titanosaur fossil in Antarctica. The continent had been the only one lacking evidence of sauropods – dinosaurs with long necks and tails.
Bestselling books the week of 9/1/11, according to IndieBound*

What's selling best in independent bookstores across America.
In Pictures: Hobbits around the world