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50 free Human Evolution trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This human evolution trivia quiz walks the family tree from a 7-million-year-old skull in the Chadian desert to the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome. The easy questions cover the famous names: which country Lucy was found in, what the Beatles had to do with her name, which island the 'Hobbit' lived on, where the first Neanderthal fossil turned up and what a Neanderthal ancestor left in the DNA of almost everyone outside Africa. From there it moves through the great discoveries at Olduvai, Laetoli, Zhoukoudian, Java and the Rising Star cave. The hard end is for people who read the papers rather than the headlines: the amateur whose Piltdown 'missing link' fooled science for 40 years, the fossil whose name means 'hope of life', the six slender 'Underground Astronauts', the first-generation hybrid with a Denisovan father and a Neanderthal mother, the jawbone a Buddhist monk found on the Tibetan Plateau and the oldest stone tools ever found, which are older than our genus. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries on human evolution, Lucy, Homo erectus, Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo floresiensis, Homo naledi, the Taung Child, Laetoli, Piltdown Man and the other fossils named here, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our Charles Darwin, dinosaurs and archaeology quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The famous 3.2-million-year-old skeleton nicknamed Lucy was discovered in 1974 in which country?
Ethiopia
Donald Johanson's team found her at Hadar in the Afar Triangle; locally she is called Dinkʼinesh, Amharic for 'you are marvellous'.
Q 02Lucy the fossil was named after a song by which band, played in camp the night she was found?
The Beatles
'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' gave a household name to a collection of several hundred bone fragments making up 40% of a skeleton.
Q 03Lucy's small skull and two-legged gait support which idea about the order of human evolution?
Bipedalism came before larger brains
A 2016 study suggests her species still spent part of its time in the trees, though how much is debated.
Q 04Homo floresiensis, the 'Hobbit', was discovered in 2003 on an island of which country?
Indonesia
The Flores remains belong to people who stood only about 1.1 metres tall and survived until roughly 50,000 years ago.
Q 05Which island evolutionary phenomenon explains the tiny size of Homo floresiensis?
Insular dwarfism
Its ancestors are thought to have reached the island around 1.27–1 million years ago; the debate is over whether they were shrunken Homo erectus or an even earlier migrant.
Q 06The first recognised Neanderthal fossil was discovered in 1856 in the Neander Valley of which country?
Germany
At first it was dismissed as one of the 'lower races'; a Gibraltar skull found in 1848 was only later recognised as the same kind of human.
Q 07Roughly how long ago did Neanderthals go extinct, coinciding with the arrival of modern humans in Europe?
40,000 years ago
Neanderthals at Gibraltar may have hung on for thousands of years after the rest had vanished.
Q 08In which year was the Neanderthal genome sequence published, revealing interbreeding with modern humans?
2010
Svante Pääbo's team later noted the mixing seems to have happened mostly between Neanderthal males and modern human females.
Q 09Roughly what share of the genome of modern humans outside Africa comes from Neanderthal ancestors?
1–4%
Some Melanesian populations carry an additional 4–6% inherited from the Denisovans on top of that.
Q 10Neanderthal brain volume, about 1,640 cc for males, compares how with people alive today?
Larger than any modern population
Despite the bigger brains, their brain organisation differed in regions linked to cognition and language.
Q 11In which modern country is Shanidar Cave, site of a Neanderthal grave associated with flower pollen?
Iraq
Another Shanidar individual survived for years with an amputated arm, a bone infection and probable deafness, suggesting he was cared for by his group.
Q 12The Denisovans were first identified in 2010 from DNA in what kind of remains from a Siberian cave?
A juvenile finger bone
The Altai Mountains cave, whose average temperature sits at freezing point, preserved the DNA well enough for Svante Pääbo's team to read it.
Q 13'Denny', a first-generation hybrid found in Denisova Cave, had parents from which two groups?
Q 21The Taung Child, described by Raymond Dart in 1925, was found in which country?
South Africa
It was the first evidence that humanity originated in Africa, and one expert has called it the most important anthropological fossil of the 20th century.
Q 22Dart argued the Taung Child walked upright partly because which skull opening sat forward?
Foramen magnum
The skull's cranial capacity of 400–500 cc is comparable to an adult chimpanzee, yet it carried human-like features.
Q 23Which scientist's team discovered the 3.7-million-year-old Laetoli footprints in 1976?
Mary Leakey
The Tanzanian site lies 45 km south of Olduvai Gorge, and Australopithecus afarensis is the species most often credited with the tracks.
A Denisovan father and a Neanderthal mother
Her father even carried some Neanderthal ancestry of his own, from an earlier episode of mixing in the Altai.
Q 14Who found the partial Denisovan jawbone, described in 2019, in a Tibetan Plateau cave decades earlier?
A Buddhist monk
Found in 1980 in the Baishiya Karst Cave, it was the first Denisovan fossil known from outside Denisova Cave.
Q 15Which populations carry the highest share of Denisovan DNA, roughly 5% of their genome?
Melanesians and Aboriginal Australians
Filipino Negritos also carry a high proportion, pointing to interbreeding somewhere in island Southeast Asia.
Q 16Which extinct species was the first human to leave Africa, colonise Asia and Europe, and wield fire?
Homo erectus
It spanned nearly two million years and was the first species with a humanlike body plan and gait.
Q 17Eugène Dubois first described 'Pithecanthropus erectus' in 1893 from fossils found on which island?
Java
The Dutch scientist had joined the colonial army specifically to hunt for the 'missing link' in the East Indies.
Q 18In which year did the Peking Man fossils disappear while being moved for safekeeping?
1941
The footlockers vanished after leaving the college on 4 December, and despite large cash rewards their fate is still unknown.
Q 19Turkana Boy, the most complete early human skeleton, was found in 1984 in which country?
Kenya
The 108-bone skeleton belonged to a youth aged somewhere between 7 and 11 who lived about 1.5 million years ago.
Q 20The species name Homo habilis literally means what?
Handy man
Named in 1964, it was contested for years, with many wanting it folded into Australopithecus africanus.
Q 24The Laetoli footprint site is in which country?
Tanzania
They were the oldest known evidence of hominin bipedalism when found, showing that upright walking came before big brains.
Q 25The Piltdown Man 'missing link', announced in 1912, was definitively exposed as a hoax in which year?
1953
A 2016 review pinned the fraud on amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson, apparently seeking recognition from his peers.
Q 26The Piltdown Man forgery combined a modern human cranium with the jaw of which animal?
An orangutan
Franz Weidenreich had already concluded in 1923 that the teeth had been filed down, but the establishment ignored him for 30 years.
Q 27Animal remains near Ardi, the 4.4-million-year-old Ardipithecus skeleton, suggest she lived in what kind of environment?
Forest
That contradicted the long-held idea that walking upright first evolved out on the grasslands.
Q 28Although Ardi walked on two legs, what feature did she keep for climbing trees?
Opposable big toes
She weighed about 50 kg and stood 1.2 metres tall; her name means 'ground floor' in the Afar language.
Q 29In which country was Toumaï, the 7-million-year-old Sahelanthropus skull, discovered?
Chad
Its position on the family tree is uncertain; it may be a very early hominin or something closer to the gorilla line.
Q 30Homo naledi was discovered in 2013 in the Rising Star Cave system in which country?
South Africa
The chamber yielded 1,550 specimens from at least 15 individuals, one of the richest hominin finds ever made.