Prehistory
Pongola Glaciation: Earth's Earliest Known Ice Age
The oldest known evidence of glaciers on Earth, showing that ice could form even under the faint young Sun of the Archean.
Region
Africa
Prehistory
Francevillian Biota: Gabon's 2.1-Billion-Year-Old Fossils
Hundreds of centimetre-scale pyritised structures were found, sparking a continuing debate over whether they are early multicellular life.
Prehistory
Vredefort Crater: The Largest Known Impact Structure on Earth
An asteroid impact left a structure originally an estimated 250-300 km wide, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Prehistory
Dunkleosteus: The Armoured Giant Fish of the Devonian Seas
Dunkleosteus became one of the best-known early vertebrate predators; it and all other placoderms died out by the end of the Devonian.
Prehistory
Wadi Al-Hitan: Egypt's Valley of the Whales and Fossil Whales
Hundreds of fossil whale skeletons, including Basilosaurus with small hind legs, record a key stage in the evolution of whales from land mammals.
Prehistory
Toumai (Sahelanthropus tchadensis): The Seven-Million-Year Skull
The cranium was named Sahelanthropus tchadensis in 2002 and is widely treated as one of the oldest possible hominins, although its status remains debated.
Prehistory
Messinian Salinity Crisis: When the Mediterranean Sea Dried Up
The Mediterranean was isolated from the Atlantic, deposited vast layers of salt and gypsum, and was refilled through the Strait of Gibraltar about 5.33 million years ago.
Prehistory
Ardi (Ardipithecus ramidus): A 4.4-Million-Year-Old Ancestor
The partial skeleton ARA-VP-6/500, published in 2009, showed an early hominin adapted both to climbing in trees and to walking upright on the ground.
Prehistory
Little Foot: The Most Complete Australopithecus Skeleton
StW 573 became the most complete Australopithecus skeleton known, unveiled in 2017 after two decades of excavation, though its age and species remain debated.
Prehistory
Laetoli Footprints: The 3.66-Million-Year-Old Hominin Trackway
The trackway proved that hominins walked fully upright with a human-like stride by about 3.66 million years ago, long before the enlargement of the brain.
Prehistory
Kenyanthropus platyops: The Flat-Faced Man of Lake Turkana
The cranium KNM-WT 40000 was named as a new genus and species in 2001, suggesting several hominin lineages lived alongside Lucy's species, though its status is still debated.
Prehistory
Lomekwi 3: The Oldest Known Stone Tools, Found in Kenya
The Lomekwi 3 artefacts, published in 2015, pushed the known start of stone toolmaking back by roughly 700,000 years, to a time before the earliest known fossils of the genus Homo.