A digital reconstruction of a skull of one million years suggests that humans may have diverted our former ancestors 400,000 years before what I thought and in Asia, not Africa, a study said on Friday.
The findings are based on a reconstruction of a crushed skull discovered in China in 1990, and have the potential to resolve the ancient “muddy in the middle” of human evolution, the researchers said.
But experts who are not involved in work warned that the findings would probably be disputed, and pointed out the inception in progress in the timeline of human evolution.
The skull, labeled as Yunxian 2, previously thought that it belonged to a human precursor called Homo Erectus.
But modern reconstruction technologies revealed characteristics closer to the species that were previously believed that there were only later in human evolution, including the recently discovered Homo Longi and our own Homo Sapiens.
“This changes a lot of thinking,” said Chris Stringer, an anthropologist at the London Natural History Museum, which was part of the research team.
“It suggests that for a million years, our ancestors had already divided into different groups, pointing out an era -early and more complex human evolutionary division than was previously believed,” he added.
If the findings are correct, it suggests that there could have been much earlier members of other early hominids, including Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens, says the study.
He also “confused the waters” in long -standing assumptions that the first humans dispersed from Africa, said Michael Petraglia, director of the Australian Research Center for Human Evolution of the University of Griffith, who did not participate in the investigation.
“There is a great change that could happen here, where East Asia is now playing a very key role in the evolution of hominins,” he told AFP.
‘Many questions’
The research, published in the Science magazine, used advanced computerized tomography, light image structure and virtual reconstruction techniques to model a complete Yunxian 2.
The scientists trusted in another similar skull to shape their model, and then compared it with more than 100 specimens.
The resulting model “shows a distinctive combination of features,” according to the study, some of them similar to Homo erectus, including a projected lower face.
But other aspects, including their apparently greater brain capacity, are closer to Homo Longi and Homo Sapiens, the researchers said.
“Yunxian 2 can help us solve what has been called the” Muddle in the middle “, the confusing variety of human fossils between 1 million and 300,000 years ago,” Stringer said in a press release.
Much about human evolution is still debated, and Petraglia said that the study findings were “provocative”, although based on solid works.
“It’s solid, but I think the jury is still out. I think there will be many questions raised,” he said.
Andy Herries, an archaeologist at the University of La Trobe, said he was not convinced by the conclusions and that genetic analysis had shown fossil morphology, or form, “it was not always a perfect indicator for human evolution.”
“They have this interpretation that I really do not believe that the genetic stories of these things we do,” he said, “he said AFP.
The findings are only the last in a series of recent investigations that has complicated what we thought we knew about our origins.
Homo Longi, also known as “Dragon Man”, was only named only a new species and close human relative in 2021, by a team that included Stringer.
The authors said their work illustrates the complexity of our shared history.
“Fossils like Yunxian 2 show how much we have to learn about our origins,” Stringer said.
