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When artificial intelligence comes up, people may immediately picture chatbots generating conversational dialogue. But that’s just one application of AI; many others are valuable tools for scientists.
Consider the work of Rice University anthropologist Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo. To get at the question of whether early human species were hunters or the hunted, Domínguez-Rodrigo turned to computer vision. He and his colleagues “trained AI on hundreds of microscopic images showing tooth marks left by the main carnivores in Africa today.” Then they had the AI model consider the tooth marks left on Homo habilis bones from individuals who lived 1.85 million years ago in East Africa.
The AI model suggests the ancient bones were chomped by leopards, big cats that aren’t at the very top of the food chain. If a leopard can take you down, you’re probably not on top of the food chain either. So was it Homo habilis that left behind evidence of tool use and hunting – or another early human species? Domínguez-Rodrigo explains what this AI-driven finding means for the big-picture story we tell about human evolution.
Also in this week’s science news:
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If Homo habilis was often chomped by leopards, it probably wasn’t the top predator.
Made with AI (DALL-E 4)
Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo, Rice University
Paleoanthropologists have thought that Homo habilis was the first stone-tool maker and meat-eater in our genus. But new research suggests H. habilis might not have been so advanced.
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A mummy of a juvenile duck-billed dinosaur, Edmontosaurus annectens, preserved as a dried carcass.
Tyler Keillor/Fossil Lab
Paul C. Sereno, University of Chicago
A clay layer one-hundredth of an inch thick preserves the fleshy details of dinosaurs buried suddenly in east-central Wyoming.
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High-level steering winds sent Hurricane Melissa on a sharp turn directly into Jamaica on Oct. 28, 2025.
Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies/University of Wisconsin-Madison
Ethan Murray, University of Colorado Boulder
Tropical storms are guided by many different wind patterns: big, like the Bermuda high, and small. A hurricane researcher explains their role in why so many storms veered off into the Atlantic in 2025.
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Jewel Scott, University of South Carolina
Young adults can take basic but powerful steps to address risk factors that set the stage for heart disease.
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Guowei (Wayne) Tu, University of Michigan; Evgueni Filipov, University of Michigan
3D woven baskets are geometrically sophisticated, with some incredible properties that engineers can use to design materials and technology.
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Corey Zheng, Georgia Institute of Technology; Shu Jia, Georgia Institute of Technology
This lens modeled on biological eyes could make it easier to give soft machines and bio-safe tools the ability to see.
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Brad Reisfeld, Colorado State University
Molds and bacteria can produce dangerous toxins − and they don’t taste very good, either.
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