PhD candidate Phoebe Meyrick delivered a research presentation today at the National Archaeology Student Conference, hosted at The University of Queensland in Brisbane. Her paper, “Medical...

Mechanical cues shape bone remodelling through osteocyte signalling. Hoey and colleagues show that mechanically stimulated osteocytes release vesicles that suppress osteoclastogenesis and bone resorption. This effect is partly mediated by the mechanoresponsive miRNA miR-150-5p, revealing a potential mechanism of EV-mediated bone communication and cell-free therapeutic strategy for pathological bone loss.

Nature Biomedical Engineering, Published online: 30 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41551-026-01702-xA structurally engineered sulfated polysaccharide rebalances bone homeostasis by limiting bone resorption without depleting regenerative cell populations.

Register on Humanitix - SocioHealthLab x TASA Applied Sociology Seminar: John MacArtney. Online. Wednesday 9th September 2026. Find event information.

Introduction In cortical bone histology, the ratio of Haversian canal and secondary osteon areas reflects bone resorption and formation during metabolic events executed by Basic Multicellular Units (B...

The earliest months of Neanderthal life have remained one of the least understood chapters of human evolution. Fossils from adults and older children have revealed the distinctive features that set these ancient relatives apart, yet remains from unborn babies are extraordinarily scarce. That has made it difficult to determine when the familiar Neanderthal body shape actually began to emerge. A newly examined fossil from southern Germany is now helping to fill part of that gap. By studying the microscopic structure inside tiny fossilised bones without damaging them, scientists have reconstructed the growth of a Neanderthal fetus during the final weeks before birth.

A Neanderthal fetus's bones looked much like a modern baby's, but its arm and leg bones, plus two baby teeth from the same site, held real surprises.

A rare Neanderthal fetus reveals that many traits distinguishing Neanderthals from modern humans likely developed only after birth.

Scans of rare Neanderthal baby remains show growth much like ours, with tooth defects hinting at early stress.

Scans of rare Neanderthal baby remains show growth much like ours, with tooth defects hinting at early stress.

We’ve learned so much about Neanderthals in the past year. We have to be living through some kind of Neanderthal knowledge Golden age. Not sure what breakthroughs started it, but we’re drowning in recent discoveries, like the fact that Neanderthals were a lot smarter than we’ve given them credit for. So smart that they developed […]

How similar were Neanderthals to us, especially at the very beginning of life? Surprisingly, we’ve known very little about how Neanderthal babies grew before birth. That’s mainly because their rema…

Learn how scans of 50,000- to 75,000-year-old Neanderthal remains from Bavaria traced fetal growth and possible metabolic stress.

A 75,000-year-old Neanderthal fetus and baby teeth from a Bavarian cave reveal new insights into their development and the earliest known prehistoric bone disorder.

Rare Neanderthal baby remains from Germany reveal growth patterns similar to modern humans and signs of early childhood stress.

An international study of infant remains from 50,000–75,000 years ago has provided new evidence about the developmental trajectory of our evolutionary "cousins," Neanderthals.

Discovered at the Sesselfelsgrotte Cave in Germany, the specimen is estimated to be between 50,000 and 60,000 years old and is known as Sesselfelsgrotte 1. A total of 12 bone fragments belonging to this prenatal Neanderthal have been unearthed, yet until now it was unclear how these compared with the bones of Homo sapiens fetuses and newborns. The researchers used microcomputed tomography to analyze how the bones had formed in Sesselfelsgrotte 1 and compared it with two baby Neanderthal skeletons found at La Ferrassie and Le Moustier in France, as well as modern humans. Overall, they found that Sesselfelsgrotte 1 was most similar to Romano-British pre-term babies aged 30 to 36 weeks, recovered from archaeological sites under 2,000 years old. “The micro-CT scans of bone microanatomy of fragments of the femur, humerus, ulna, fibula, three ribs, mandible, vertebra and frontal bone of Sesselfelsgrotte 1 revealed skeletal tissue structure partly consistent with late third trimester gestation in H. sapiens,” write the study authors. “All bones showed broad microanatomical patterns consistent with modern human fetal growth in the final trimester of pregnancy approaching eight–nine months,” they add. Such a finding suggests that the growth trajectory for Sesselfelsgrotte 1 was more or less...

A UQ skeletal histologist has led analysis of baby teeth and bone fossils from 50,000-70,0000 years ago that reveal the growth of Neanderthals was remarkably similar to modern humans.

Biography Phoebe Meyrick is a PhD Candidate in Bioarchaeology at the University of Queensland, examining how social inequality is embodied in bone health in ancient human populations. This research...

This is an open access book. This volume is the first dedicated to action within bioarchaeology that can bring about social and political change.

We report that femoral cortical thickness was strongly and negatively associated with secondary osteon porosity in an Australian autopsy sample, indicating that thicker cortices contained less porous...

In the relentless march of ageing, osteoporosis has long been a one-way street: bones thin out, fracture risk soars, and patients are sentenced to lifelong drugs that merely slow the decline. But 2025 may be remembered as the year that changed. In a clinical trial involving 180 postmenopausal women, researchers injected “primed” stem cells directly into sites of low bone density.

Dr. István Takács offers advice on how to keep our bones strong in the long term.

Joint conference of the Society for the Study of Human Biology (SSHB) and the International Society for the Study of Human Growth and Clinical Auxology (ISGA)

Skeletochronology combined with growth curve reconstruction is routinely used to assess the age and growth dynamics of extinct and extant vertebrates. Here we performed in vivo labelling studies of th...