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For more than 350 000 years, Neanderthals inhabited Europe and Asia until, in a sudden change by evolutionary standards, they disappeared around 40 000 years ago. This was at around the same time the anatomically modern human Homo sapiens emerged from Africa.

With their distinctive sloped forehead, large pelvis and wide noses, Neanderthals leave in their wake one of the great mysteries of human evolution.

They lived during the middle to late Pleistocene Epoch, about 400 000 to 40 000 years ago. Neanderthals lived in Eurasia with traces discovered as far north as present-day Belgium and south to the Mediterranean and southwest Asia.

They were not the only hominid (human-like) species in existence on the planet at the time. Other archaic human groups such as Homo floresiensis and Denisovans, also walked the earth.

Credit: Evan Davis; Marine biodiversity could plummet to levels not seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs

As greenhouse gas emissions continue to warm the world's oceans, marine biodiversity could be on track to plummet within the next few centuries to levels not seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs, according to a U.S. National Science Foundation-supported study in the journal Science by Princeton University researchers.

The paper's authors modeled future marine biodiversity under different projected climate scenarios. They found that if emissions are not curbed, species losses from warming and oxygen depletion alone could mirror the substantial impact humans already have on marine biodiversity by around 2100. Tropical waters would experience the greatest loss of biodiversity, while polar species are at the highest risk of extinction, the authors reported.

Credit: Smithsonian Institution;  A trilobite fossil from the Ordovician period, from about 485 million to 443 million years ago.

What is the recovery pattern of lifeforms after natural cataclysms 

Scientists at Stanford University have discovered a surprising pattern of how life reemerges from cataclysms. Research published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B shows that the usual rules of body size evolution change not only during mass extinctions but also during the subsequent recovery.