The extinct stilt-legged equids of North America are not related to Asiatic asses or horses, but instead represent a distinct lineage outside of living equid diversity that became extinct in the terminal Pleistocene.

Subterranean fossil bone hosts a living microbiome different from the surrounding sediment without evidence of original protein preservation.

The carbon in lens membrane lipids correlates to the year of birth of an individual, a phenomenon that is unprecedented in the current body of literature.

The cessation of major anthropogenic disturbances since European colonization in the forests of central Africa leads to a canopy closing, and to the disappearance of certain light-demanding tree species.

A chemically unstable ostrich eggshell peptide survives for at least 3.8 million years at the equator, stabilized by strong mineral interactions.

Traces of crawling locomotion, including children younger than 3 years old, are documented for the first time in the global human ichnological record.

Independent dating techniques have established that the H. naledi fossils are between 236 and 335 thousand years old, indicating that small-brained hominins with relatively primitive body shapes co-existed with our early ancestors in Africa.

Mineralized placental tissue from Late Byzantine Troy enables the detailed reconstruction of genomes of mixed bacterial species responsible for maternal sepsis in the ancient world.

Ancient hepatitis B virus (HBV) genomes were reconstructed from up to 7000-year-old Stone Age human skeletons, suggesting a long-time complex co-evolution with human populations.