by By Will Dunham
(Reuters) -In 1990 an old human skull was excavated in the Chinese Hubei province that was so much distorted during fossilization that it was difficult to gauge its meaning. A new analysis now indicates that the skull is one of our species to an early branch of a sister line in a finding that can shake up the concept of how human evolution has folded down over the past million years.
Researchers used advanced scanning and digital reconstruction techniques to determine the original form of the skull, which is between 940,000 and 1.1 million years old, and compared it with more than 100 other human fossils. They said it seems to be the oldest known member of an evolutionary origin that included the enigmatic Denisovans who later roamed and interpreted by a wide strip of Asia with our kind of gay sapiens.
The Schedel, named Yunxian 2, seems to be that of a man who may be 30 to 40 years old, according to Paleoanthropologist Xijun Ni of Fudan University and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, who published the study on Thursday in the study.
Species in the human evolutionary line are called hominins. The skull was previously classified as belonging to the gay species gay erectus, those body relationships that seemed to our own, but a smaller brain size and different features. The researchers said the new analysis showed that the skull showed characteristics that indicate that it was not a gay erectus.
“It has a long, low skull and receding forehead behind a strong browridge, but the estimated brain size is the largest so far for any hominin of that age. The face is big but with flat and forward-facing cheekbones, and a large nose with a projecting nasal bridge, but without the midfacial prominence We find in Neanderthals, “Anthropologist and Study Co-Author Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London Said.
The skull was partially crushed and his shape distorted for many years during and after the fossilization process of printing and movement in the ground.
The researchers placed the skull in an Asia-Centrated Hominin descent that includes the species Homo Longi, known from fossils, including a skull that was discovered near the Chinese city of Harbin, as well as the Denisovans.
The skull, Ni said, shares characteristics with the other members of this origin, such as a wide and solid roof of the mouth, flat and low cheekbones, an extensive area at the back of the head and some characteristics of the ear region.
The existence of Denisovans was unknown until researchers announced the discovery of their remains in Denisova Cave in Siberia in 2010, with fossils that were later dug up elsewhere in Asia. Both Denisovans and Neanderthals experienced significant interactions with Homo Sapiens, including intersection, before they disappear shortly after for reasons that are not fully understood. Because of the old crossing, many people nowadays wear DNA from Denisovans from Asia and some other places.
The findings can change the understanding of the path of human evolution in the past million years, whereby members of the gender – a group of closely related species – are called gay.
The researchers suggested that five large branches, or clades, of large brains of people in Africa, Europe and Asia started to deviate from each other more than a million years ago. These branches led to homo sapiens; Homo Longi and the Denisovans; the Neanderthals (Homo Neanderthalensis); Homo Heidelbergensis, first known for a jawbone found in Germany; And gay erectus.
“The Homo Longi clade was quite successful in Asia and took a very large area with different environments for more than a million years. They probably lived in small, isolated groups and had little interaction with other groups. Consequently, they show a significant morphological diversity,” Ni said.
The researchers said that the Yunxian 2 -skull provides proof that the process of divergence between the human lines took place earlier than before suggested.
“Based on our new discovery, we have challenged the old timelines of human evolution,” said Ni.
The oldest known Homo Sapiens fossils date from around 300,000 years ago in Africa. But the researchers suggested that the origin that led to our kind of hundreds of thousands of years earlier off the other human -like lines – possibly more than a million years ago.
Stringer said that the skull can help to resolve a dilemma that is called ‘mud in the middle’, the confusing series of human fossils between 300,000 and a million years old.
If the Yunxian 2 -skull is close to the origins of both the linages of Homo Longi/Denisovan and Denisovan and Homo Sapiens, Stringer added: “It can represent one of the most important windows in the evolutionary processes that our gender formed about a million years ago.”
(Reporting by Will Dunham in Washington, editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
