Are all known specimens of Homo naledi female?

In 2013 a large number of skeletons belonging to a previously unknown Hominin species were discovered in a newly discovered chamber within the Rising Star Cave System in the Cradle of Humankind at Maropeng, South Africa. This new chamber was named the Dinaledi Chamber (Chamber of the Stars in Sotho), and the new Hominin species was given the name Homo naledi ('naledi' meaning 'star'). A number of subsequent specimens assigned to the same species have been found in nearby chambers. Some of the specimens have been dated to between 335 000 and 236 000 years before the present, although it is possible that the total chronological range of all the specimens is longer.

Homo naledi is an unusual species, with a mosaic of modern and archaic traits. It has a small brain size, more comparable to that of an Australopithecene than an Archaic Human. The bones of the trunk and shoulders of Homo naledi also resemble those of Australopithecenes, yet the hands, lower limbs, and face of the species are far more Human. 

A recent study of the teeth of Homo naledi found that they showed remarkably little variation, and concluded that this might indicate that all known specimens might belong to a single sex. However, estimating the sex of a specimen on bone-or-tooth morphology is a remarkably difficult process, particularly where there isn't a dimorphism (i.e. two consistently different forms) within the known specimens of that species.

Sex determination can also sometimes be achieved using ancient DNA recovered from specimens. However, DNA, while this has been used on some ancient Hominins from cool climates, DNA tends to degrade rapidly in warmer environments, such as South Africa.

In a paper published in the journal Cell on 24 June 2026, a team of scientists led by Palesa Madupe of the Globe Institute at the University of Copenhagen, the Human Evolution Research Institute at the University of Cape Town, and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, present the results of a study in which they assessed the sexes of all known specimens of Homo naledi using palaeoproteomic analysis of dental enamel.

The study focuses on amelogenins, a type of protein which helps to direct the mineralisation of tooth enamel. This the DNA which is used to make this protein is principally found on the X-chromosome, however, unlike many other genes, this has not been lost from the Y-chromosome, with the effect that there are two distinct forms of amelogenin, Amelogenin X, which drives from the version of the gene on the X-chromosome, and which is produced by all Humans, and Amelogenin Y, which is derived from the version of the gene on the Y-chromosome, and which is found only in males (albeit only making up about 10% of the total. This tool has previously been used to determine the sexes of other Pleistocene Hominins, making it a realistic choice for establishing the same in Homo naledi. 

Madupe et al. began by taking surface etchings from four teeth, then processing them. All of the samples yielded the Amelogenin X variant, but none produced Amelogenin Y, indicating that all four were female. The samples were then subjected to a more destructive round of testing, crushing the teeth completely and then analysing the whole sample. This yielded identical results, indicating that the less destructive test was sufficiently reliable.

Location and layout of the Rising Star cave system. (A) Map of South Africa zoomed in (insert), showing the position of the area known as the Cradle of Humankind, approximately 50 km northwest of Johannesburg, where the Rising Star cave system is located. (B) The Rising Star cave system within the Cradle of Humankind. (C) Layout of the Rising Star System and the Dinaledi subsystem and Lesedi Chamber, where all the specimens were recovered, and the photos of the four Homo naledi specimens initially micro-destructively sampled by acid etching, then sectioned for enamel growth analysis and subsequently sampled destructively. Madupe et al. (2026).

Following this success, Madupe et al. carried out an analysis of another nineteen Homo naledi teeth, using the non-destructive method (i.e. using surface etchings, not whole teeth). This included all 20 known Homo naledi specimens within the experiment. The Amelogenin X variant was again found in seventeen specimens, while the Amelogenin Y variant was again not detected. Two specimens yielded such low protein levels that they were excluded from the study, although these specimens also yeilded Amelogenin X variant at low levels and no Amelogenin Y variant. The Amelogenin Y variant was detected in all the controls used for the study, which comprised fifteen male Homo sapiens, two male Paranthropus robustus, a male Australopithecus africanus, a male Denisovan, and a male Homo antecessor. 

The Amelogenin X protein found in Homo naledi showed no variation, something which would be considered extra-ordinary in a modern Human population, suggesting that either the species Homo naledi was remarkably genetically homogeneous, or that all of the individuals were very closely related. The individuals come from locations up to 145 m from one another within a complex cave system, and are not thought to have been deposited at the same time, making the former diagnosis more likely.

Madupe et al. identify eighteen confidently identified informative single amino acid polymorphisms on the Hominid Amelogenin X protein, two of which are notably different in Homo naledi and Modern Humans. One of these, a phenylalanine amino acid molecule at position 141 on the protein, is the same as that seen in present day Strepsirrhini (Lemurs, Galagos, Pottos, and Lorises) and Cercopithecidae (Old World Monkeys), but differs from the position in Modern Humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans, all of which have a tyrosine amino acid at this point. The second, a proline amino acid at position 635, is the same character state as in all living non-Human Primates, but differs from the situation in Modern Humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans, all of which have an alanine amino acid at this point. This location has not been recovered in any Homo antecessor, Homo erectus, or Australopithecus africanus specimen to date, but has been identified in two Paranthropus robustus specimens, both of which both had a proline amino acid in this position.

Analysis of the Amelogenin protein has previously been shown to be a useful way to identify the sex of a variety of Pliocene and Pleistocene Hominins. Application of this test to Homo naledi failed to identify any males among the 20 individuals currently known, nor any intra-specific variation on the protein, both highly unusual states. Notably, the study included individual UW 102a, popularly known as 'Neo' (pronounced ney-oh), the most complete Homo naledi specimen known, who has previously identified as male on the basis of a relatively robust skeleton (fortunately, the name Neo, which is Sotho and means 'gift', can be applied to either sex). 

The cranium of Homo naledi specimen popularly known as 'Neo'. Nutcracker Man.

Since the method has previously been applied to individuals from South Africa as much as two million years old, and all of the male controls used within the study were identified as such, Madupe et al. do not believe there was anything wrong with the methodology being used. On this basis, they conclude that the Amelogenin Y variant was not present in any of the specimens, either because they were all female, or because of a mutation which prevented the expression of this protein in male Homo naledi. However, if the previous study on the dentition of Homo naledi is taken into account, it does raise the likelihood of all specimens being female.

Mutations which lead to the deletion or non-expression of the Amelogenin Y protein are known. They are more common in some Human populations than others (in one population in Pakistan, 8% of men did not produce this protein), and has been observed in a Neanderthal individual from Siberia. However, such mutations are typically extremely rare. 

Since there is no reason to believe the sex ratio in living Homo naledi populations was anything other than 1:1, a random accumulation of 20 female specimens is incredibly unlikely. However, such a ratio is not inconsistent with the previously-made suggestion that the presence of Homo naledi specimens in the Rising Star Cave System may have been the result of deliberate mortuary practices rather than a random accumulation. 

The Dinaledi Chamber is notoriously hard to access, to the extent that following its discovery, lead scientist Lee Berger assembled a team of physically small female palaeontologists and archaeologists with caving experience in order to carry our excavation work there. In theory, the cave could have been equally inaccessible to male Homo naledi, leading to a bias in the preservation of individuals there. However, ten of the known individuals are juveniles who died before their second molar erupted, an age at which it is unlikely that sex-related size-differences would have been sufficient to prevent males entering the site.

Exclusively female funerary sites are not known from any Modern Human population. The closest we have are the Neolithic Panoría site in Spain and Edcoural Cave site in Portugal, where females make up 70% and 67% of the population respectively, something which has been thought to reflect the greater importance of females in a matrilineal society. However, the Neolithic inhabitants of Iberia were still Modern Humans, very different to Homo neledi, a Pleistocene Hominin not interpreted to have been closely related to us, and the two groups cannot be expected to have had similar funerary practices (if Homo naledi indeed had these at all).

The expression of archaic amino acid variants in Homo naledi further supports the idea that this species was not closely related to Modern Humans, although the absence of data from archaic Homo species, such as Homo erectus or Homo antecessor, makes it hard to work out how distant a relationship this implies. Gathering such data for more Human and Australopithecene species may help to resolve the phylogentic position of Homo naledi. The less destructive sampling method used by Madupe et al. in this study should make such sampling easier that the earlier form of this technique, which required the destruction of whole teeth, a highly precious resource for extinct Hominins.

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Northern Venezeula hit by pair of major Earthquakes, leaving at least 164 dead.

The United States Geological Survey recorded a Magnitude 7.2 Earthquake at a depth of 20.3 km, roughly 23 km to the southeast of the town of Yumare in Yaracuy State on the north coast of Venezuela, slightly before 6.05 pm local (slightly before 10.05 pm GMT) time on Wednesday 24 June 2026. This was followed after 39 seconds by a Magnitude 7.5 Earthquake 4 km to the southeast of the original event, at a depth of 10 km. 

The approximate location of the second 24 June 2026 Yaracuy Earthquake. USGS.

At least 164 people are known to have died as a result of this event, with another 971 injured. However, more than a hundred buildings have collapsed as a result of the Earthquakes, it is thought likely that many thousands more people may be trapped or dead beneath the rubble. The worst of the damage occurred in the State of La Guaira, to the east of the epicentres of the events.

A partially collapsed apartment building in the city of Catia La Mar in the State of La Guaira, Venezuela. Federico Parra/AFP/Getty Images.

The northern coast of Venezuela forms the boundary between the South American Plate, which is being pushed to the west by the expansion of the Atlantic, and the Caribbean Plate, which is also being pushed westward, but at a slower rate due to a collision with the Cocos Plate (which lies to the west of Central America). This means that the two plates are moving past one-another, creating a transform plate margin. This is not a smooth process, rather the plates constantly stick together, causing pressure to build up, then break apart in often spectacular earthquakes.

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The June Bootid Meteor Shower.

The June Bootid Meteor Shower is visible each year between 26 June and 2 July, typically peaking on 27 June. This meteor shower if highly unpredictable in nature, with most years producing very few meteors, but the shower occasionally having peak years, in which hundreds of meteors are visible each hour; the most recent major peak year happened in 1998 (a smaller peak was recorded in 2004), with the three peaks prior to that happening in 1927, 1921, and 1916. The shower has a radiant point (point from which the meteors appear to radiate) in the constellation of Boötes, close to the North Pole, making the shower possible to spot from anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, but hard to see in the Southern Hemisphere. Unfortunately, this year's peak activity comes only two days before the Full Moon on 29 June, which means that good observation of the meteors may be hampered by the brightness of the Moon.

The radiant point of the June Bootid Meteor Shower. Space Weather.

Meteor showers are thought to be largely composed of material from the tails of comets. Comets are composed largely of ice (mostly water and carbon dioxide), and when they fall into the inner Solar System the outer layers of this boil away, forming a visible tail (which always points away from the Sun, not in the direction the comet is coming from, as our Earth-bound experience would lead us to expect). Particles of rock and dust from within the comet are freed by this melting (strictly sublimation, transforming directly from a solid to a gas due to the low pressure on it's surface) of the comet into the tail and continue to orbit in the same path as the comet, falling behind over time.

The Earth passing through a stream of comet dust, resulting in a meteor shower. Not to scale. Astro Bob.

The June Bootids Meteor Shower is caused by the Earth passing through the trail of comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke, where it encounters thousands of tiny dust particles shed from the comet as its icy surface is melted (strictly sublimated) by the heat of the Sun. 7P/Pons-Winnecke visits the Inner Solar System every 6.37 years, most recently in May 2021, and last came close to the Earth in 1939.

How the passage of the Earth through a meteor shower creates a radiant point from which they can be observed. In The Sky.

7P/Pons-Winnecke was discovered on 12 June 1819 by French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons, then based at Marseilles Observatory, and rediscovered by Friedrich August Theodor Winnecke at Pulkovo Observatory near Saint Petersburg. The designation 7P/Pons-Winnecke implies that it was the seventh comet discovered (7/ - strictly speaking people had been observing comets for thousands of years, but it was not until the mid-eighteenth century that it was realised that they were predictable objects that returned cyclically), that it is a periodic comet (P - again, most comets are periodic, but the term 'periodic comet' is reserved for those with periods of less than 200 years, since these can be reliably predicted), and that it was discovered by Pons and Winnecke.

7P/Pons-Winnecke immaged on 23 September 2015 from Kiev, Ukraine. The image is a single 300 second exposure, with the slightly elongate objects being stars that have moved over the course of the exposure. Alexander Baransky/Kiev Comet Station/Fachgruppe Kometen.

Comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke currently completes one orbit every 2326 days (6.37 years) on an eccentric orbit tilted at 22.3° to the plane of the Solar System, that takes it from 1.26 AU from the Sun (126% of the average distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun) to 5.61 AU from the Sun (5.61 times as far from the Sun as the Earth, and slightly outside the orbit of Jupiter). As a comet with a period of less than 20 years with an orbit angled at less than 30° to the plane of the Solar System, 7P/Pons-Winnecke is considered to be a Jupiter Family Comet.

The orbit and current position of 7P/Pons-Winnecke. JPL Small Body Database.

This orbit means that 7P/Pons-Winnecke occasionally comes close to the Earth, with the last close approach having happened on 1 July 1939, when it reached a distance of 0.11 AU from the Earth (11% of the distance between the Earth and the Sun, or 16 052 000 km). The comet will next come close to us in June 2062, when it will reach a distance of 0.17 AU from the Earth.

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Microeledone galapagensis: A new species of Incirrate Octopus from the Galápagos Islands.

Incirrate, or Finless, Octopuses are one of the two major divisions of the Octopoda, and the one most familiar to most people. Whilst many species living on coastal shelves and the upper part of the water column have been studied extensively, they are also a major part of the deep-sea fauna, although these are much less well known. The Family Megaleledonidae comprises large Incirrate Octopuses with a single sucker-row. These were originally described from the deep waters of the Southern Ocean, and for a long time were assumed to be restricted to the Antarctic, but recently have been found living as far north as Iceland, suggesting a much wider distribution. 

In a paper published in the journal Zootaxa on 25 May 2026, Janet Voight and Stephanie Smith of the Negaunee Integrative Research Center of the Field Museum of Natural History, Salome Buglass of the Charles Darwin Fundación and the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia, and Alexander Ziegler of the Bonner Institut für Organismische Biologie at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, describe a new species of Megaleledonid Octopus from a seamount in the Galápagos Islands.

The species is described from a single female specimen which was recovered by the Remote Operated Vehicle Hercules from a seamount 25 km to the northwest of Isla Darwin, during a ten day voyage of the Research Vessel Nautilus to the Galápagos Marine Reserve. While this specimen was the only one directly examined, two other Octopus apparently belonging to the same species were observed within 1-2 km of the site where the specimen was caught.

The new species is placed in the Genus Microeledone, the first new species added to the genus since it was first described in 2004, and given the specific name galapagensis, meaning 'from the Galápagos'. As the name suggests, members of this genus are smaller than is typical for members of the Megaleledonida, with the single known specimen of Microeledone galapagensis having a mantle-length of only 31.5 mm. It is squat in form, with a head narrower with than the mantle and eyes which do not meet at the midline, and short arms, reaching only 1.4 times the length of the mantle, each of which has up to 30 suckers arranged in a single row. These suckers are tall and straight, with an approximately similar diameter along the tentacle, although they are sightly larger close to the body and slightly smaller at the tip.

Microeledone galapagensis in its natural environment. Voight et al. (2026).

Microeledone galapagensis lacks colouring on its outer mantle, but is heavily pigmented on the inner lining of the dorsal mantle muscles. This is thought to be an adaptation to its habitat and diet. In shallow-water Octopuses, pigment cells on the outer mantle allow the Octopus to change colour in order to blend in with its environment to avoid predators. All known specimens of Microeledone galapagensis were found living at depths of between 1770 and 1800 m beneath the sea surface. At these depths, there is no natural light, and therefore no need for Octopuses to camouflage themselves in this way. However, many available food species bioluminess when threatened, potentially giving away the location of anything consuming them to larger predators. The thick pigmentation on the inner lining of the dorsal mantle should hide such luminescence, thus protecting the Octopus from predation.

Interestingly, the only other known species of Microeledone, Microeledone mangoldi, lacks pigmentation on the inner lining of the dorsal mantle muscles, but has pigmented sheaths over its internal organs, apparently another way to deal with the problem of bioluminescent prey. This implies that the two species independently evolved different solutions to the same problem, which in turn suggests that their last common ancestor did not face this problem, and therefore must have lived in a different environment, presumably a more shallow one.

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Unusual Corded Ware Culture burial discovered in Germany.

Archaeologists from the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology in Saxony-Anhalt, working on sites ahead of the planned construction of a power line project, have uncovered a burial associated with the Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Corded Ware Culture near Gerstewitz in Burgenland district, according to a press release issued on 15 June 2026.

The burial, that of a man of about 25, was typical of the Corded Ware Culture in that he was placed in a crouched position lying on his left hand side and facing to the south (everyone was buried in this position and facing the same way, although women were always placed on their right sides while men were always placed on their left). 

The remains of a male individual excavated from a Chacolithic Corded Ware Culture burial near Gerstewitz in Saxony-Anhalt State, Germany. Christian Pabst/State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology.

However, unlike other burials from the period, he was buried within a former kiln-pit, rather than beaneath a burial mound, as was typical of the Corded Ware Culture. Furthermore, his body seems to have slipped slightly from the original position in which he was placed, possibly due to his being placed on a layer of organic material which has since decayed.

This has led to suspicions that there may have been something irregular about the burial. The man appeared to have died as a result of damage to his skull, something which could indicate that he was a murder victim, or had been killed in battle (a group of chalcolithic tribesmen, having lost a battle, might conceivably feel the need to leave the area, leading to a burial being carried out in a hurry). 

There is also another possibility. While Human remains have never been found associated with a Corded Ware Culture kiln pit in the past, the remains of Horses and Dogs have been found in these settings. The assumption in those cases was that the Animals had been ritually sacrificed before being buried, raising the question as to whether the man buried in the Gerstewitz kiln pit had met the same fate.

An archaeologist examines the Gerstewitz kiln pit burial. Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

The Corded Ware Culture gains its name from the distinctive pottery which it produced, in which rope cords were used to mark the surface of pots. The Culture first appeared in Eastern Europe around 3000 BC, and may have migrated there from the Eurasian Steppes. Genetic studies of Corded Ware individuals have concluded that they were closely related to, if not directly descended from the Yamnaya people of that area. The Corded Ware people are thought to have been one of the first Indo-European groups to move into Europe, and at there peak they occupied much of north, central, and eastern Europe, as well as parts of Scandinavia and northern Italy, as well as parts of the Caucasus and Iran. 

Corded Ware pottery in the collection of the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte in Berlin. Einsamer Schütze/Wikimedia Commons.

Like the Yamnaya people, the Corded Ware people kept both horses and cattle, consumed dairy products, and used wheeled vehicles, the first people in Europe to have done so. However, they were in many was culturally contiguous with the peoples who had lived in the area before, suggesting that they spread by intermixing with the local population as they introduced new technologies, rather than by conquest and driving the former occupants off the land.  The Corded Ware people were never really a single culture, but a series of linked cultures spread across a wide area. Over time these linked cultures evolved in different directions, and by about 2300 BC, had become distinctive enough that they are no longer referred to as Corded Ware Culture by archaeologists. 

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