Quote:Ancient Skull Found in China Is Unlike Any Human Seen Before

'An international team of scientists has described an ancient human fossil in China unlike any other hominin
found before. It resembles neither the lineage that split to form Neanderthals, nor Denisovans, nor us, suggesting
our current version of the human family tree needs another branch.

The jaw, skull, and leg bones belonging to this yet-to-be classified hominin, labeled HLD 6, were discovered in
Hualongdong, in East Asia, in 2019. In the years since, experts at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have
struggled to match the remains to a known lineage.

The hominin's face is similarly structured to that of the modern human lineage, which split from Homo erectus as
far back as 750,000 years ago. But the individual's lack of chin appears more like that of a Denisovan – an extinct
species of ancient hominin in Asia that split from Neanderthals more than 400,000 years ago.

Working alongside researchers from China's Xi'an Jiaotong University, the UK's University of York, and Spain's
National Research Center on Human Evolution, researchers at CAS think they have uncovered an entirely new
lineage – a hybrid between the branch that gave us modern humans and the branch that gave us other ancient
hominins in the region, like Denisovans.

[Image: https://rogue-nation.com/mybb/attachment.php?aid=1133]
(Top) Skull of the ancient hominin from China.
(Centre) The skull and jaws of HLD 6.
(Bottom) Family tree of early humans that may have lived in Eurasia more than 50,000 years ago.

Historically, many hominin fossils from the Pleistocene that have been found in China haven't fitted easily into any
one lineage. As a result, such remains are often explained away as intermediate variations on a straight path to
modern humanity; as an archaic example of a Homo sapien, for example, or an advanced form of Homo erectus.

But this rather linear, simplistic interpretation is controversial and not widely accepted. While Homo erectus did
persist in Indonesia until roughly 100,000 years ago, the remains that were recently found in East China hold a
greater resemblance to other, more modern lineages of hominin.

Previously, genome studies on Neanderthal remains in Europe and western Asia have found evidence of a fourth
lineage of hominin living in the Middle to Late Pleistocene. But this missing group has never been officially identified
in the fossil record.

Perhaps the recent hominin remains found in China are a missing piece of the puzzle. The fossilized jaw and skull
belong to a 12- or 13-year-old, and while its face has modern-human like features, the limbs, skull cap, and jaw
"seem to reflect more primitive traits," the authors of the analysis write.


Their results complicate the path to modern humans. The mosaic of physical features found in this ancient hominin
instead supports the coexistence of three lineages in Asia – the lineage of H. erectus, the lineage of Denisovan, and
this other lineage that is "phylogenetically close" to us.

Homo sapiens only appeared in China around 120,000 years ago, but it seems as though some of our 'modern'
features existed here long before that. It may be that the last common ancestor of H. sapiens and Neanderthals
arose in southwest Asia and later spread to all continents.
That theory will now need to be confirmed with more archaeological research.

The study was published in the Journal of Human Evolution...'