A study on Ozempic’s impacts on Alzheimer’s disease didn’t have the results scientists hoped for. We talk to UNLV’s Dr. Jeffrey Cummings on the research and what’s next. Also from UNLV: a look at how a “new” species of an ancient human ancestor can help shape our view on evolution. We end with a fun story on “Silver Belle”... the first tree from Nevada to serve as the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree!

A study on Ozempic’s impacts on Alzheimer’s disease didn’t have the results scientists hoped for. We talk to UNLV’s Dr. Jeffrey Cummings on the research and what’s next. Also from UNLV: a look at how a “new” species of an ancient human ancestor can help shape our view on evolution. We end with a fun story on “Silver Belle”... the first tree from Nevada to serve as the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree!

Kissing, for all popularity, is a bit of a mystery. Scientists have long debated when humans’ ancestors first put their lips together, and whether the act is simply a cultural trait. A new study suggests giving someone a peck has a long history, dating up to around 21 million years ago, long before modern humans existed. The work was published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior on November 19.

The first kiss in history probably took place over 16.9 million years ago — long before humans even existed, a new study suggests.

Each year during Hispanic Heritage Month, huge celebrations can be expected across the U.S. to showcase the diversity and culture of Hispanic people. This year, the Trump administration’s immigration crackdowns, a federally led English-only initiative and an anti-diversity, equity and inclusion push have changed the national climate in which these celebrations occur. Organizers across the country, from Massachusetts and North Carolina to California and Washington state, have postponed or canceled heritage month festivals altogether.

When Karen Harry first saw the artifacts, she snorted and shook her head. She simply did not believe that they were ancient cooking pots—everything about them looked wrong. Harry, a ceramics archaeologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, works mostly in the desert Southwest of the United States, where Native Americans traditionally made some of the most elegant pottery in the world. But one day in 2003, a colleague at UNLV, Liam Frink, returned from a trip to western Alaska, where he had been excavating sites associated with the Thule people, the ancestors of the modern-day Inuit. Frink showed her the remains of some supposed cooking pots he had collected there. The pieces looked more like chunks of scorched dirt than typical potsherds—blackened and crumbling, like nothing Harry had ever seen.

In mid-August, the science journal Nature published UNLV research about a newly discovered species of human ancestors. A group of scientists traveled to Ethiopia, where they found 13 teeth fossils. Some of them belonged to the genus Homo — yes, the same genus modern humans belong to. But they also found a set of teeth that belonged to a new species of the genus Australopithecus, indicating that both species were present in Africa at the same time a little over 2 million years ago. 

The appearance of the genus Homo is close to the Plio-Pleistocene boundary, reflected by fossils reported recently by Brian Villmoare and his colleagues and well dated at about 2.8 million years ago. The origin of Homo may relate to changes in temperature and associated changes in habitat, as recognised five decades ago by South African palaeontologists Elisabeth Vrba and Bob Brain, although they emphasised a date of 2.5 million years ago.

Researchers have discovered a new species of human ancestor that existed alongside Homo sapiens.

We were never alone, until recently at least. Just as there are multiple giraffe species in Africa, there were multiple human species, and some overlapped in time and space.

Researchers say recently discovered teeth come from a previously undiscovered species of Australopithecus, adding to our understanding of human evolution.

The famed Australopithecus Lucy may have a cousin. A new discovery of fossilized teeth in an Ethiopian field has researchers theorizing that they came from a new species of Australopithecus. They dated the teeth to the same period as the oldest known specimens of the genus Homo, found in the same field, upending some traditional theories of human evolution.