MAN

Blue eyes are typically associated with beauty, or perhaps Frank Sinatra. But to University of Wisconsin anthropologist John Hawks, they represent an evolutionary mystery. For nearly all of human history, everyone in the world had brown eyes. Then, between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, the first blue-eyed baby was born somewhere near the Black Sea.

A 47-million-year-old primate fossil that is so complete scientists can even tell what the animal's last meal was promises to shed new light on the earliest stages of evolution of the lineage that eventually led to humans, researchers said Tuesday. The unprecedented fossil of a lemur-like creature that probably weighed no more than 2 pounds when it was fully grown is remarkable because it is the most complete primate specimen ever obtained.

A treasure trove of 4.4-million-year-old fossils from the Ethiopian desert is dramatically overturning widely held ideas about the early evolution of humans and how they came to walk upright, even as it paints a remarkably detailed picture of early life in Africa, researchers reported Thursday. The centerpiece of the diverse collection of primate, animal and plant fossils is the near-complete skeleton of a human ancestor that demonstrates our earliest forebears looked nothing like a chimpanzee or other large primate, as is now commonly believed.

While Joel and Ethan Coen are best known for crafting off-kilter stories featuring a cast of quirky characters, their latest film focuses on a perfectly average Midwestern man watching his world crumble. A departure from last year's Oscar-nominated "No Country for Old Men," the brothers' latest film, "A Serious Man," follows Larry Gopnik, a physics professor whose life is thrown into turmoil when his wife (Sari Lennick) announces that she wants a divorce. And, by the way, she's invited her newly widowed boyfriend, Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed)

How do true movie stars respond in the face of a bomb threat? The show must go on, bien sur. Two hours after an anonymous phone call forced the evacuation of a Beverly Hills hotel, thrusting "The Ugly Truth" stars Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler, along with a posse of journalists, onto the cozy median of the street and then across to a nearby Italian restaurant, Butler is back relaxing in his room, ready to laugh off the morning's events.

Despite its respected cast, accomplished director and distinguished source author, "The Other Man" is, at best, a minor work. That's not to say this atypical hybrid of romantic melodrama and twisty thriller should be avoided; there are several effective surprises and intellectual pleasures to be had here. But approaching the film with, let's say, lowered expectations may go a long way toward appreciating what it attempts, as well as what it achieves. Based on a short story by German writer Bernhard Schlink, who also penned the novel on which last year's excellent "The Reader" was based, "The Other Man" stars an especially sober Liam Neeson as Peter, a successful computer software executive long married to Lisa (Laura Linney)

DNA from fossilized human feces found in an Oregon cave is 14,300 years old, at least 1,200 years older than previous evidence for humans in North America, researchers said Thursday. The find provides the strongest evidence in an archaeological controversy about whether people of the Clovis culture, which manufactured distinctive stone tools and weapons, were the first to populate the Americas. The new evidence, reported online in the journal Science, indicates they were not.

Chimps do it. Gorillas do it. Michael Phelps does it too. The exuberant dance of victory -- arms thrust toward the sky and chest puffed out at a defeated opponent -- turns out to be an instinctive trait of all primates -- humans included, according to research released Monday.

Carved tools and ornaments from Russia paint a rare picture of the time about 45,000 years ago when modern humans migrated out of Africa to colonize Europe, researchers reported Friday in the journal Science. "The big surprise here is the very early presence of modern humans in one of the coldest, driest places in Europe," said lead author John Hoffecker of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Russia "is one of the last places we would have expected people from Africa to occupy first."

Three Australian caves have yielded a treasure trove of fossils of ancient kangaroos, marsupial lions and giant lizards that roamed the outback for hundreds of thousands of years. These so-called megafauna went extinct about 45,000 years ago, shortly after humans arrived on the continent. Researchers, writing in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, suggest that the extinction was the result of the human use of fire for hunting -- and not climate change, as some scientists have suggested.