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Ģ����Ƶ University faculty and fellows are at the forefront of cutting-edge research, investigating and sometimes transforming our understanding of the past. Among many revolutionary studies, two OHIO instructors recently made groundbreaking discoveries, unearthing key insights to evolutionary biology.

A team led by Associate Professor of Anthropology Sabrina Curran discovered new evidence of hominin activity in Europe, pointing to a presence on the continent far earlier than was previously thought.

“We didn’t initially expect to find much,” Curran explains. “But during a routine check of the collections, we found several cut-marked bones. This led to further investigation … and the discovery of other distinct marks across different bones, suggesting deliberate butchering activities.”

Previous research indicated hominin presence in Dmanisi, Georgia, around 1.8 million years ago, but this new finding by Curran’s team documents hominin activity in the area at least 2 million years ago—roughly 200,000 years before the Dmanisi site.

“The evidence coming out of Romania suggests that early hominins were much more adaptable than we previously thought,” she says. “These early humans were capable of surviving and thriving in a variety of environments.” Her findings were published in the journal Nature Communications in January 2025.

Just a month later, a team led by Christopher Torres published their own paper in the journal Nature, revealing their findings about an important fossil of the oldest known modern bird, Vegavis. The paper was based on a study led by Torres during his time as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Until a nearly complete, 69-million-year-old skull was collected in a 2011 expedition by the Antarctic Peninsula Paleontology Project—which Torres also participated in—Vegavis’ status as an early modern bird was highly contested in scientific circles. The new study published by Torres’ team contextualizes the importance of Vegavis in avian evolution and locates Antarctica as a geographic area of interest for further study of evolution.

“Few birds are as likely to start as many arguments among paleontologists as Vegavis,” says Torres, who is now a professor at University of the Pacific. “This new fossil is going to help resolve a lot of those arguments. Chief among them: Where is Vegavis perched in the bird tree of life?”

Birds known to have existed at roughly the same time in different areas of the world vary drastically from Vegavis, an early relative of modern ducks and geese, and are barely recognizable as such by modern standards. Complicating matters is the fact that many existing fossils are incomplete. As such, Vegavis is a crucial discovery in unlocking evolutionary knowledge.

Feature illustration: A fossil found in Antarctica is the earliest evidence of modern birds that now live across the globe. Courtesy Mark Witton