Tomàs Marquès Bonet is a biologist and directs the Comparative Genomics Group at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (CSIC-UPF), mainly dedicated to analysing and comparing the genome of primates in order to try to better understand the human genome.

This is undoubtedly an encouraging stage for evolutionary biology. Palaeoproteomics has the potential to explore time intervals that were completely inaccessible until now.

This work reviews the main questions surrounding the evolution of the genus Homo, such as its origin, the problem of variability in Homo erectus and the impact of palaeogenomics.

The palaeogenomics (ancient DNA) field can be defined as the recovery and analysis of genetic material from the biological remains of the past and has become a powerful scientific field that provides direct information about the evolutionary process through space and time.

Despite the bewilderment caused the almost continuous bombardment of news about the discovery of a new fossil that revolutionizes everything we knew until now about human evolution, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, there is a broad consensus regarding certain key moments in our evolution.

Human uniqueness Most cosmological views on human origins portray these as being divine, beyond the natural world. This has partly been influenced by our obvious uniqueness. Because, of all past human species –numbering perhaps over a dozen– we are the only ones to have reached historical