Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
The exact place and time of Homo sapiensâ emergence remains obscure because the fossil record is scanty and the chronological age of many key specimens remains uncertain. In this weekâs issue, Jean-Jacques Hublin and his colleagues describe new human fossils from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco; their work is accompanied by a separate report on the dating of the fossils by Shannon McPherron and his colleagues. Together they report remains of at least five individuals in the layer dating back 300,000â350,000 years. They identify numerous features, including a facial, mandibular and dental morphology, that align the material with early or recent modern humans. They also identify more primitive neurocranial and endocranial morphology. Collectively, the researchers believe that the remains of the Jebel Irhoud hominins can be assigned to the earliest evolutionary phase of Homo sapiens. Image: Philipp Gunz, MPI EVA Leipzig (License: CC-BY-SA 2.0)
Andreas Goldthau calls for the world's 20 largest economies to take the helm in managing the transition from fossil fuels while keeping the global economy stable.
Gaps in the fossil record have limited our understanding of how Homo sapiens evolved. The discovery in Morocco of the earliest known H. sapiens fossils might revise our ideas about human evolution in Africa. See Letters p.289 & p.293
High-speed communication systems that use optical fibres often require hundreds of lasers. An approach that replaces these lasers with a single, ring-shaped optical device offers many technical advantages. See Letter p.274
Droplet-like assemblies of RNA in cell nuclei are associated with certain neurodegenerative diseases. Experiments reveal that these assemblies become 'frozen' gels in cells, potentially explaining their toxicity. See Article p.243
A pair of two-dimensional materials have been shown to exhibit ferromagnetism — the familiar type of magnetism found in iron bar magnets. Such materials could have applications from sensing to data storage. See Letters p.265 & p.270
Evolution favours the body form best adapted to the local environment, but it can also favour rare forms. Stickleback experiments reveal how these two selection forces can interact, and how this can limit population divergence. See Letter p.285
The geological record contains evidence of how Earth's climate responded to periodic changes in our planet's orbit and rotation. An investigation reveals how this record can be leveraged to constrain estimates of past climate dynamics.
The standard model of particle physics is incomplete, but experimental particle decays that occur through a ‘flavour-changing neutral current’ process, which show discrepancies to standard model predictions, may offer hints to the existence of new particles.
Recent measurements of B-meson decays in which tau leptons are produced might challenge the standard model assumption that interactions of leptons differ only because of their different masses.
Nucleotide repeat expansions create templates for multivalent base-pairing, which causes RNA to undergo a sol–gel phase transition and may explain the formation of nuclear RNA foci that are commonly observed in several neurological and neuromuscular diseases.
The solved crystal structure of the GLP-1 receptor bound to a truncated agonist enables the design of synthetic agonists that exhibit potent activity in vivo.
The crystal structure of the full-length human glucagon receptor reveals the essential role of the 12-residue ‘stalk’ segment and an extracellular loop in the regulation of ligand binding and receptor activation.
Intrinsic long-range ferromagnetic order is observed in few-layer Cr2Ge2Te6 crystals, with a transition temperature that can be controlled using small magnetic fields.
Frequency combs produced by solitons in silicon-based optical microresonators are used to transmit data streams of more than 50 terabits per second in telecommunication wavelength bands.
A computational tool that combines human-like chemical understanding with ab initio methods guides the compositional choice of complex five-component metallic oxides, yielding two new complex crystal structures.
In a study using stickleback fish, negative frequency-dependent selection favours rare immigrants over common residents, weakening the effect of divergent natural selection.
New human fossils from Jebel Irhoud (Morocco) document the earliest evolutionary stage of Homo sapiens and display modern conditions of the face and mandible combined with more primative features of the neurocranium.
Thermoluminescence dating of fire-heated flint artefacts, and directly associated newly discovered remains of Homo sapiens, indicate that the Middle Stone Age site of Jebel Irhoud in Morocco is 383–247 thousand years old.
In a prairie vole (Microtus ochrogaster) model of social bonding, a functional circuit from the prefrontal cortex to nucleus accumbens is dynamically modulated to enhance females’ affiliative behaviour towards a partner.
Combined studies in MYC-driven mouse lymphomas and human Burkitt lymphoma unravel an essential role for the B-cell antigen receptor in the control of tumour B-cell fitness both in vitro and in vivo, with possible biological and clinical implications.
Random mutagenesis in haploid human cells coupled to quantitative protein measurements with different antibodies is used as a readout for individual cellular phenotypes.
Crystal structures of the human GLP-1 receptor in complex with two negative allosteric modulators reveal a common binding pocket, and, together with mutagenesis and modelling studies, further our understanding of the receptor activation mechanism.Author: Please check the wording of the following statement, which will appear online only.