All Articles Tagged As: migration

Dawn of human matrilineal diversity (4/25/2008)

Early human populations evolved separately for 100,000 years ...> Full Article

Archaeologist find pre-Clovis human DNA (4/4/2008)

Human DNA from dried excrement recovered from Oregon's Paisley Caves is the oldest found yet in the New World -- dating to 14,300 years ago, some 1,200 years before Clovis culture -- and provides apparent genetic ties to Siberia or Asia ...> Full Article

Human family tree mapped out in new detail by genetic sequencing effort (2/24/2008)

Researchers have created the highest resolution map of human genetic diversity to date, providing insight into how groups of people throughout the world are related and adding weight to previous theories that humans originated from Africa. ...> Full Article

Ancient 'Out of Africa' migration left stamp on European genetic diversity (2/22/2008)

Human migration from Africa to Europe more than 30,000 years ago appears to have left a mark on the genes of Europeans today. ...> Full Article

Evolutionary History of SARS Supports Bats As Virus Source (2/20/2008)

Scientists who have studied the genome of the virus that caused severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) say their comparisons to related viruses offer new evidence that the virus infecting humans originated in bats. ...> Full Article

Humans inhabited New World's doorstep for 20,000 years (2/14/2008)

The human journey from Asia to the New World was interrupted by a 20,000-year layover in Beringia, a once-habitable region that today lies submerged under the icy waters of the Bering Strait. ...> Full Article

Unravelling the North West's Viking past (2/10/2008)

The blood of the Vikings is still coursing through the veins of men living in the North West of England ...> Full Article

The history of Central African Pygmy and Bantu-speaking farmer populations (2/9/2008)

Researchers studying the demographic and genetic history of Central African Pygmee and Bantus-speaking farmer populations, suggest that the two groups diverged 70,000 years ago. ...> Full Article

Mummy lice found in Peru may give new clues about human migration (2/8/2008)

Lice from 1,000-year-old mummies in Peru may unravel important clues about a different sort of passage: the migration patterns of America's earliest humans, a new University of Florida study suggests. ...> Full Article

Globetrotting Black Rat Genes Reveal Spread Of Humans And Diseases (2/2/2008)

DNA of the common Black Rat has shed light on the ancient spread of rats, people and diseases around the globe. Studying the mitochondrial DNA of 165 Black Rat specimens from 32 countries around the world, an international team of scientists has identified six distinct lineages in the Black Rat's family tree, each originating from a different part of Asia. ...> Full Article

Columbus May Have Brought Syphilis To Europe From New World (1/16/2008)

Did Columbus and his men introduce the syphilis pathogen into Renaissance Europe after contracting it during their voyage to the New World? Or does syphilis have a much longer history in the Old World? The most comprehensive comparative genetic analysis conducted on the family of bacteria (the treponemes) that cause syphilis and related diseases such as yaws supports the so-called "Columbian theory" of syphilis's origins. ...> Full Article

Tree DNA helps support traditional view that some New Zealand plants were saved from catastrophic flood (1/15/2008)

Advanced DNA dating techniques used to analyse New Zealand kauri trees have led scientists to believe that New Zealand was never completely submerged. ...> Full Article

Same Genetic Machinery Generates Skin Color Evolution in Fish and Humans (12/14/2007)

When humans began to migrate out of Africa about 100,000 years ago, their skin color gradually changed to adapt to their new environments. And when the last Ice Age ended about 10,000 years ago, marine ancestors of ocean-dwelling stickleback fish experienced dramatic changes in skin coloring as they colonized newly formed lakes and streams. New research shows that despite the vast evolutionary gulf between humans and the three-spined stickleback fish, the two species have adopted a common genetic strategy to acquire the skin pigmentation that would help each species thrive in their new environments. ...> Full Article

Global warming sends salamanders packing (11/29/2007)

A genetic study of the salamander family that encompasses two-thirds of the world's salamander species shows that periods of global warming helped the amphibians diversify and expand their range from North America into Europe and Asia, where pockets of them are still found today. ...> Full Article

Gene study adds weight to theory that native people of the Americas arrived in a single main migration across the Bering Strait (11/28/2007)

Researchers analyze 678 genetic markers in 29 native populations ...> Full Article

Bear hunting altered genetics more than Ice Age isolation (11/27/2007)

It was not the isolation of the Ice Age that determined the genetic distribution of bears, as has long been thought. This is shown by an international research team led from Uppsala University in Sweden in the latest issue of Molecular Ecology. One possible interpretation is that the hunting of bears by humans and human land use have been crucial factors. ...> Full Article

New discoveries about pig evolution in East Asia (11/27/2007)

The research into the origins of domestic animals is of significance not only for understanding their development per se, but also for understanding the human society evolution. Although there are evidences to show that pigs were independently domesticated in multiple places throughout the world, the detailed scenario of the origin and dispersal of domestic pigs in East Asia remains unclear. ...> Full Article

Researchers posit new ideas about human migration from Asia to Americas (10/26/2007)

Questions about human migration from Asia to the Americas have perplexed anthropologists for decades, but as scenarios about the peopling of the New World come and go, the big questions have remained. Do the ancestors of Native Americans derive from only a small number of "founders" who trekked to the Americas via the Bering land bridge? How did their migration to the New World proceed? What, if anything, did the climate have to do with their migration? And what took them so long? ...> Full Article

Mice Roar Message: Genetic Change Happens Fast (10/21/2007)

While looks can be deceiving, heredity is revealing, and two scientists who've studied the genetic makeup of a common field mouse report that what's most revealing to them is how fast both genes and morphology can change. ...> Full Article

Environmental Setting of Human Migrations in the Circum-Pacific Region (10/11/2007)

A new study adds insight into the migration of anatomically modern humans out of Africa and into Asia less than 100,000 years before present (BP). ...> Full Article

Computer Program Traces Ancestry Using Anonymous DNA Samples (9/24/2007)

A group of computer scientists, mathematicians, and biologists from around the world have developed a computer algorithm that can help trace the genetic ancestry of thousands of individuals in minutes, without any prior knowledge of their background. ...> Full Article

Pig study sheds new light on the colonisation of Europe by early farmers (9/5/2007)

Ancient DNA harvested from pigs has allowed scientists, for the first time, to accurately determine the arrival of early farmers into Europe 11,000 years ago during the latter part of the Stone Age. ...> Full Article

Migration of Early Humans From Africa Aided By Wet Weather (9/4/2007)

The African origin of early modern humans 200,000--150,000 years ago is now well documented, with archaeological data suggesting that a major migration from tropical east Africa to the Levant took place between 130,000 and 100,000 years ago via the presently hyper-arid Saharan-Arabian desert. ...> Full Article

New research challenges previous knowledge about the origins of urbanization (9/3/2007)

Ancient cities arose not by decree from a centralized political power, as was previously widely believed, but as the outgrowth of decisions made by smaller groups or individuals, according to a new study from researchers at Harvard University, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Edinburgh. ...> Full Article

Ethiopian Plateau Formation Coincided With Climate Change That May Have Spurred Human Evolution (9/2/2007)

More than three million years ago, early hominins evolved the ability to walk upright and in doing so started us along the evolutionary path that eventually gave rise to Homo sapiens. ...> Full Article

Student's Discovery Could Help Rewrite Prehistory (8/13/2007)

A little boy's natural curiosity may have turned up archeological evidence that the earliest Native Americans came from Europe, not Asia. ...> Full Article

Professor Unlocks More Of The Mystery Surrounding Invasive Species (8/10/2007)

Assessing the projected impacts of invasive species is a leading issue for scientists today. A major question for ecologists is determining which characteristics will predispose a species to be a good or bad colonizer when introduced into an ecosystem. New research from assistant professor at the UGA Odum School of Ecology John Drake adds another piece to the invasive species puzzle. ...> Full Article

Early Humans In China One Million Years Ago (8/7/2007)

Chronology and adaptability of early humans in different paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental settings are important topics in the study of human evolution. ...> Full Article

Research Suggests Single African Origin Of Humans (7/23/2007)

New research at the University of Cambridge claims to have compelling new evidence that humans stem from the same single point of origin. ...> Full Article

New Research Proves Single Origin Of Humans In Africa (7/20/2007)

New research published in the journal Nature (19 July) has proved the single origin of humans theory by combining studies of global genetic variations in humans with skull measurements across the world. The research, at the University of Cambridge and funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), represents a final blow for supporters of a multiple origins of humans theory. ...> Full Article

Polynesians Discovered America 100 Years Before Columbus (6/5/2007)

Prehistoric Polynesians, not European voyagers, may have brought chickens to the Americas, according to new research from The University of Auckland's Department of Anthropology which will be published in the prestigious journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). ...> Full Article

Genetic Study of Snail Migration May be Linked To Human Migration (5/17/2007)

Researchers from The University of Nottingham want the public to get involved in a project which could tell us how our ancestors came to Britain and Ireland. Experts from the School of Biology need people living in Ireland and Scotland to get involved in collecting snails. ...> Full Article

Study On The Transoceanic Colonization Of A Drosophila Fly (5/17/2007)

Drosophila buzzatii is a fruit fly species which arrived to Europe from Argentina 300 years ago. European flies show some genome differences compared to their homologous in South America. UAB scientists have studied the different molecular structure of a mobile gene named Osvaldo in order to understand the colonizing process. ...> Full Article

DNA Evidence Confirms Theory That Modern Humans Have Common Ancestry (5/11/2007)

Researchers have produced new DNA evidence that almost certainly confirms the theory that all modern humans have a common ancestry. ...> Full Article

Pig study forces rethink of Pacific colonisation (3/17/2007)

A survey of wild and domestic pigs has caused archaeologists to reconsider both the origins of the first Pacific colonists and the migration routes humans travelled to reach the remote Pacific. ...> Full Article

Skull Is First Fossil Proof of Human Migration Theory out of Africa (1/16/2007)

The skull was originally unearthed from a riverbed near Hofmeyr, South Africa, in 1952 but was never accurately dated. Frederick E. Grine, an anthropologist and anatomist at Stony Brook University on Long Island, New York, saw the skull in an office in Cape Town, South Africa, and was struck by its similarities to the skulls of the first modern humans found in Europe. ...> Full Article