Bruce Bower

Bruce Bower

Behavioral Sciences Writer

Bruce Bower has written about the behavioral sciences since 1984. He often writes about psychology, anthropology, archaeology and mental health issues. Bruce has a master's degree in psychology from Pepperdine University and a master's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. Following an internship at Science News in 1981, he worked as a reporter at Psychiatric News, a publication of the American Psychiatric Association, until joining Science News as a staff writer. In 1996, the American Psychological Association appointed Bruce a Science Writer Fellow, with a grant to visit psychological scientists of his own choosing. Early stints as an aide in a day school for children and teenagers with severe psychological problems and as a counselor in a drug diversion center provided Bruce with a surprisingly good background for a career in science journalism.

All Stories by Bruce Bower

  1. Archaeology

    Precolonial farmers thrived in one of North America’s coldest places

    Ancestral Menominee people in what’s now Michigan’s Upper Peninsula grew maize and other crops on large tracts of land despite harsh conditions.

  2. Anthropology

    Males of this ancient human cousin weren’t always bigger than females

    Molecular evidence from a 2-million-year-old southern African hominid species indicates sex and genetic differences in P. robustus.

  3. Anthropology

    Humans used whale bones to make tools 20,000 years ago

    Ancient scavengers of the beached beasts turned their bones into implements that spread across a large area, researchers say.

  4. Archaeology

    Neandertals may have hunted in horse-trapping teams 200,000 years ago

    A revised age for a German site indicates that our evolutionary cousins organized horse ambushes around 200,000 years ago.

  5. Archaeology

    British tin might have fueled the rise of some Bronze Age civilizations

    Chemical evidence of tin from coastal British sites reaching Bronze Age Mediterranean societies highlights a supply chain dispute.

  6. Archaeology

    A Pueblo tribe recruited scientists to reclaim its ancient American history

    DNA supports modern Picuris Pueblo accounts of ancestry going back more than 1,000 years to Chaco Canyon society.

  7. Anthropology

    A lion’s bite marks a fatal fight with a possible Roman-era gladiator

    The first skeletal evidence of a gladiator show or execution involving an exotic animal comes from a Roman British man with bite marks from a lion.

  8. Humans

    Ancient horse hunts challenge ideas of ‘modern’ human behavior

    An archaeological site in Germany suggests communal hunting and complex thinking emerged earlier in human evolution than once thought.

  9. Anthropology

    Denisovans inhabited Taiwan, new fossil evidence suggests

    An expanding geographic range for these close Neandertal relatives leaves Denisovans' evolutionary status uncertain.

  10. Archaeology

    Ancient Arabian cymbals ring up Bronze Age musical connections

    Copper instruments discovered at a 4,000-year-old site in Oman echo ritual influences from South Asia.

  11. Archaeology

    Neandertal-like tools found in China present a mystery

    A style of primitive stone tools named for the French site where they were first discovered have shown up half a world away.

  12. Anthropology

    Western Europe’s oldest face adds new wrinkles to human evolution

    Face bones unearthed in a cave suggest that members of our genus, Homo, reached northern Spain as early as 1.4 million years ago.