Study of 1M-year-old skull points to earlier origins of modern humans
7 hours ago
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- #human evolution
- A million-year-old human skull found in China, known as Yunxian 2, suggests modern human origins may be older and possibly outside Africa.
- Reclassified as Homo longi (dragon man), closely linked to Denisovans, the skull could be the closest fossil to the split between modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans.
- Advanced reconstruction techniques indicate the skull's features align more with Homo longi than Homo erectus, pushing back the evolutionary split by at least 400,000 years.
- This discovery challenges previous timelines, suggesting Homo sapiens' origins could be in western Asia, not Africa, and doubling the estimated time of origin.
- The study proposes that large-brained humans evolved along five major branches in the last 800,000 years, including Homo longi and Denisovans.
- The findings, published in Science, may be contentious as they contradict some genetic studies, highlighting the need for further fossil and genetic evidence.