archaeologist have uncovered teeth in China that do n’t appear to belong to to any sleep together species ofHomo — not quite modern humans , not quite Neanderthals . Thefindings , published in theAmerican Journal of Physical Anthropology , suggests that the teeth may belong to hybrids of known populations or even to a whole newfangled coinage of human ancestors we never knew about .
From about 340,000 to 90,000 years ago , homophile neanderthalensisresided in Europe and western Asia , while anatomically advanced humans ( Homo sapiens ) were living in Africa . Meanwhile , a mysterious group of extinct human relatives calledDenisovanswere present in Siberia . While the " hobbit,“Homo floresiensis , showed up in Indonesia 95,000 years ago , the evolutionary flick of the genusHomoremains incomplete due to the famine of East Asiatic hominin ( that ’s us and our ancestors ) fossils from the belated midriff to the early Late Pleistocene .
In 1976 , hominin dental sample — nine tooth from four individuals , BBC write up — were recovered from the early Late Pleistocene site of Xujiayao in northern China . Now , an international team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Spain ’s National Research Center on Human Evolution ( CENIEH ) have re - analyzed the dodo , measure out the sizing and physical body of various dental characteristic , from the radical to the pate to the groove between the cusps .
" Teeth are like ' landscape in miniature , ' " written report authorMaría Martinón - Torres of CENIEHtells the BBC . " Each of those slope , grooves , valleys determine a pattern or combination of features that can be classifiable of a population . "
They found a mix of primitive and derived features : They ’re different from primitive and recent modern world , and they have some features that are vulgar ( but not undivided ) to the Neanderthal filiation . what is more , the fossils have hold some naive structures that have previously been found in East Asian hominins from the former and Middle Pleistocene , despite how they ’re geologically unseasoned .
These findings indicate the existence of a population in China that ’s contemporary withHomo sapiensand Neanderthals , but of “ ill-defined taxonomic condition . ” Perhaps these features were the result of interbreed between differentHomospecies , or perhaps there ’s a primitive hominin stock that survived late into the Late Pleistocene in China . " What we have seen is an unnamed group for us,“Martinón - Torres say . But she caution : “ We can not go further to say it ’s a fresh species because we need to liken it to other things . "
Images viaCentro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana
