Scientists Think These Skulls May Be New Human Ancestor
Since the first Neanderthal fossil was discovered in the 1850s, scientists have debated the difference between humans and their relatives. The two species definitely mated, but there are some big differences between them, from Neanderthals’ big brows and squat figures to their distinctive DNA. Now, ... skulls that seem to be both human and Neanderthal just added an intriguing twist to that debate.
The skulls . . . were discovered in Lingjing, China in 2007 and 2014 and are between 100,000 and 130,000 years old. Researchers are calling them “a morphological mosaic” because of a collage of characteristics.
They’ve got Neanderthals’ ear canals, eastern Eurasian humans’ low and flat brainpans, and similarities to early modern Old World humans, too.
The skulls are distinctive enough that they seem to belong to an entirely different species—one that’s neither human nor Neanderthal, but that shares characteristics of both.
Abstract
Two early Late Pleistocene (~105,000- to 125,000-year-old) crania from Lingjing, Xuchang, China, exhibit a morphological mosaic with differences from and similarities to their western contemporaries. They share pan–Old World trends in encephalization and in supraorbital, neurocranial vault, and nuchal gracilization. They reflect eastern Eurasian ancestry in having low, sagittally flat, and inferiorly broad neurocrania. They share occipital (suprainiac and nuchal torus) and temporal labyrinthine (semicircular canal) morphology with the Neandertals. This morphological combination reflects Pleistocene human evolutionary patterns in general biology, as well as both regional continuity and interregional population dynamics.
