Fossils are witnesses to the past and essential pieces for scientific dissemination. They allow us to understand evolution, the history of the Earth, and the existence of already extinct species, such as the mammoth. An animal that coexisted and interacted with humans for thousands of years, it is essential to know more about it now that our planet is facing great challenges that inevitably recall the conditions suspected to have contributed to its disappearance, such as the climate crisis or human action.

What were the hands of ancient hominids like? And what could our ancestors have done with them? Analysis of fossils found in northern Kenya has shed some more light on these questions. These are the remains of a hand from Paranthropus boisei, one of the four species of hominids –along with theHomo habilis, heHomo rudolfensisand theHomo erectus– that coexisted in East Africa between 2 and 1 million years ago. Analysis of this primate's bones has revealed that it had grip strength similar to that of gorillas and tool-making skills similar to that of humans.

When I began working in the field of virology two decades ago, searching for antiviral treatments, I never imagined that the knowledge accumulated in our field would contribute years later to the design of new therapies for Alzheimer's. However, in recent years, there has been growing interest in laboratories around the world, including our own, IrsiCaixa, in understanding the role that viruses play in the neurocognitive degeneration process linked to this type of dementia. These studies are now beginning to yield astonishing results.

Very agile, but of medium size and with small horns that served to match or intimidate opponents. This was the Khankhuuluu –the prince of dragons, in Mongolian–, a new species of dinosaur considered the most recent ancestor of the giant tyrannosaurs and which paleontologists from the Faculty of Science at the University of Calgary have just discovered. In a publication in the journal NatureResearchers have described how this lineage of predators evolved after the extinction of other large predatory dinosaurs around 85 million years ago, providing further insight into the evolution of tyrannosaurs.