Horses were being ridden, worked, and traded long before anyone thought it possible. New research pushes back the accepted timeline of human use of horses by centuries, showing that humans used horses in organized ways as early as the 4th millennium BCE, if not earlier.

Peruvian hairless dogs—a medium-sized elegant Indigenous breed with pointy ears—are widely represented in ancient Andean coastal pottery. Celebrated as a national symbol, they were declared part of Peru's cultural heritage in 2000. A new study published in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology examining dog skeletal remains and a mummified dog, provides the first physical evidence of Peruvian hairless dogs from the only Wari Empire site found to date, on the coast of northern Peru, known as Castillo de Huarmey. 

Recently, the archaeometry team from University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with National Center for Archaeology, Key Laboratory of Archaeological Sciences and Cultural Heritage, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, utilized paleoproteomic technology to reveal that the feather decoration unearthed from Tomb No. 1 at Wuwangdun (Tomb of King Kaolie of Chu) of the late Warring States period (the late 3rd century BCE) were crafted from the feathers of multiple bird species, and that the used animal glue originated from the extinct short-horned water buffalo (Bubalus mephistopheles). This research not only fills the gap in the scientific analysis of archaeological feather remains in China but also extends the known survival time of the short-horned water buffalo by at least 700 years. The related findings were published in Science Bulletin entitled "Proteomic characterization of feather decorations and extinct buffalo glue during early Iron Age China".

The crystals growing inside a bone from an ancient deer-like animal helped scientists figure out the age of a prehistoric butchering site in China. And the new, older age for the site means that people there developed complex, creative tool-making techniques earlier than previously thought, during a harsh ice age-- challenging long-held ideas about early humanity at this site becoming creative thanks to warmer times of plenty.

Researchers have identified four more members of Sir John Franklin's 1845 expedition, one of whom was the subject of great debate lasting for more than a century.

Anthropologists from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Waterloo led the work that analyzed DNA samples extracted from skeletal remains and found matches with DNA donated by living descendants. These new discoveries bring the total number of identified sailors of the Franklin expedition to six.

Dasosaurus tocantinensis was about 20 meters long and lived approximately 120 million years ago. Its closest relative lived in present-day Spain.

An international research team led by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (IPHES-CERCA) has documented the highest-altitude prehistoric cave with evidence of intense human occupation known to date in the Pyrenees. The site, known as Cova 338, is located at 2,235 meters above sea level in the Núria Valley (Queralbs, Ripollès - Girona). The study documents recurrent human occupations spanning more than 5,000 years and provides some of the earliest evidence of copper-rich mineral exploitation in Western Europe. The results forces to rethink the role of high mountain environments in Pyrenean prehistoric societies.

In the past, scientists thought that prehistoric peoples only travelled briefly through high-altitude mountain areas, rather than staying to take advantage of their resources. But new evidence suggests that, starting about 5,500 years ago, a prehistoric community repeatedly climbed up to Cave 338, 2,235 meters above sea level in the Pyrenees, to collect and process malachite for copper — returning many times over thousands of years. Additional finds, including jewelry and remains from at least one child, suggest that much more remains to be found when excavations reopen this summer.