Teenager's skull found in China belongs to an unknown species of ancient people
Miscellaneous / / August 08, 2023
He had facial features, like modern people - but there was no chin yet.
International team of scientists analyzed discovered in 2019 the skull of an ancient person and found out that it does not correspond to previously discovered hominids.
The skull, lower jaw and leg bones of a man codenamed HLD 6 have been found at the Hualongdong excavation site in China. The approximate age of the find is estimated at 300 thousand years. Until now, scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) studying it have not been able to identify the find in accordance with the species known to us.
The fossilized skull and jaw belonged to a teenager aged 12 or 13. It is noted that his face had features similar to modern people, his limbs, the vault of the skull and jaw reflect more primitive features.
In particular, the structure of the face is similar to modern people who separated from Homo erectus 750 thousand years ago. But in the absence of a chin, it is more reminiscent of the Denisovans - fossil people who separated from the Neanderthals more than 400 thousand years ago.
The joint work of Chinese scientists with experts from the UK and Spain made it possible to confirm that this is indeed a previously undiscovered species.
Historically, Pleistocene fossils found in China have been difficult to attribute to any particular species. They are often explained as intermediate variations on the way to modern man - for example, by calling early Homo sapien or advanced Homo erectus. But this simplification has not gained wide acceptance in the scientific community.
Moreover, analysis The genome of Neanderthals from Europe and Western Asia allowed scientists back in 2014 to suggest that humanity had not three ancestors (Neanderthals, Denisovans and sapiens), but four. However, this theory has not yet been confirmed by archaeological finds.
Perhaps this skull from China is the very link that scientists have been missing. In this case, the path of development of modern people is much more complicated. It turns out that only in Asia three genera of hominins coexisted: sapiens (Homo erectus), Denisovans and the third species, to which the teenager belonged, the remains of which were found in China.
Homo sapiens appeared in China about 120,000 years ago, but this find shows that even before them, there were hominids with "modern" facial features in the region. It is possible that this is the last common ancestor between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, which appeared in Southeast Asia and then spread to all continents.
Now this theory needs to be confirmed by additional archaeological research.
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