Have scientists discovered a new species of HUMANS? Ancient skull of a chinless child who lived 300,000 years ago suggests our family tree ‘needs another branch’
Have scientists discovered a new species of HUMANS? Ancient skull of a chinless child who lived 300,000 years ago suggests our family tree ‘needs another branch’
- In 2019, a fossilized skill, jaw and leg bones were found in Hualongdong, China
- Interestingly, researchers say the unknown species ‘possessed no true kin’
Scientists think they’ve identified a new species of human after finding an ancient skull that belonged to a child who lived up to 300,000 years ago.
The fossilized remains, including a jaw, skull and leg bones, were discovered in Hualongdong, China in 2019.
What baffled experts, however, is that the individual’s facial features didn’t match the lineage that split to form Neanderthals, Denisovans, or us, leading them to suspect we may be missing a branch of the human family tree.
Interestingly, researchers say the species “possessed no true chin.”
This would make it more Denisovan-like – an extinct species of ancient humans in Asia that split from Neanderthals more than 400,000 years ago.
Scientists believe they have identified a new species of human after finding an ancient skull (above) belonging to a child who lived up to 300,000 years ago near the Hualongdong excavation site in China’s Anhui province. The fossilized remains also include a jaw and leg bones
The limbs, skull cap and jaw — which likely belonged to a 12 or 13-year-old child — all appeared to “display more primitive features,” according to experts at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
But on the other hand, the rest of the child’s face had features more similar to modern humans.
It led the team of researchers to conclude that they had discovered an entirely new lineage of hominids — a hybrid between the branch that gave us modern humans and the one that gave rise to Denisovans in the region.
This would mean there was the Homo erectus lineage that led to today’s Homo sapiens, the Denisovan lineage, and this third link in the hominin family tree of Asia that was “phylogenetically close” to us.
Using the recovered fragments of the fossil’s skull and jaws, the team was able to discern that this individual’s face resembled something close to a modern human, while the lack of a defined chin more closely resembled a Denisovan – a extinct species of ancient human from Asia
It led the team of researchers to conclude that they had discovered an entirely new lineage of hominins in Asia – a hybrid between the branch that gave us modern humans and the one that gave rise to Denisovans in the region.
The finding is also significant because previous studies on Neanderthal remains in Europe and western Asia have found evidence of a fourth genus of hominins living in the Middle to Late Pleistocene.
However, this missing group has never been officially identified in the fossil record.
In China, Homo sapiens did not appear until about 120,000 years ago.
But this new research would suggest that our “modern” features existed much longer than this in the East Asian region.
Researchers believe that the last common ancestor of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals originated in southwest Asia and later spread to all continents.
The new study is published in the Journal of Human Evolution.