Prehistory
Doushantuo Formation: China's 600-Million-Year-Old Fossil Embryos
Phosphatised microfossils revealed cell-level detail from the Ediacaran Period, fuelling a debate over whether they include the oldest known animal embryos.
Region
Asia
Prehistory
Chengjiang Biota: China's Early Cambrian Fossil Treasure Trove
Discovered in 1984 and listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012, the Chengjiang fossils are one of the most complete records of early animal life.
Prehistory
Siberian Traps: The Volcanic Eruptions Behind the Great Dying
One of the largest volcanic episodes in Earth's history released enormous volumes of greenhouse and toxic gases and is widely regarded as the main trigger of the end-Permian mass extinction.
Prehistory
Paraceratherium: The Largest Land Mammal That Ever Lived
A giant browsing rhino relative, known from Asia and first described in 1911, is among the largest land mammals ever, at roughly 15 to 20 tonnes.
Prehistory
Homo erectus: The First Human Species to Leave Africa
Homo erectus became the first hominin known to spread widely across Africa and Asia and survived for more than 1.5 million years before its extinction.
Prehistory
Dmanisi Hominins: Earliest Humans Outside Africa in Georgia
Five skulls and other remains showed that small-brained early Homo had left Africa by about 1.8 million years ago, before the invention of the hand axe.
Prehistory
Peking Man: The Zhoukoudian Fossils and Their Wartime Loss
Zhoukoudian yielded remains of about 40 Homo erectus individuals, but almost all the original fossils disappeared in December 1941 and have never been found.
Prehistory
Java Man: Eugène Dubois and the Trinil Homo erectus Fossils
Dubois named Pithecanthropus erectus in 1894; after decades of controversy the fossils were recognised as the first known specimens of Homo erectus.
Prehistory
Woolly Mammoth: The Ice Age Giant, Its Fossils and Its Extinction
The woolly mammoth vanished from the mainland around 10,000 years ago; the last known population, on Wrangel Island, died out about 4,000 years ago.
Prehistory
Denisovans: The Lost Human Species Revealed by Ancient DNA
Ancient DNA revealed a previously unknown branch of humans, sister to the Neanderthals, whose genes survive in many living people in Asia and Oceania.
Prehistory
Xiahe Mandible: A Denisovan Jaw from the Tibetan Plateau
Ancient proteins identified the jaw as Denisovan, showing that these archaic humans lived on the high Tibetan Plateau at least 160,000 years ago.
Prehistory
Homo floresiensis: The 'Hobbit' Humans of Flores, Indonesia
The discovery revealed a small-bodied, small-brained human species that survived on an isolated island until about 50,000 years ago, reshaping views of human evolution in Asia.