Fossils found in China in 1970’s and 1980’s have been subjected to intense scrutiny by Australian and Chinese scientists who say the fossils might represent unknown people. They have stopped short of calling them a new species.
The scientists believe they have identified a new group of Stone Age people, dubbed the Red Deer Cave people, who lived alongside modern humans in China as recently as 11,000 years ago.
The fossils were discovered in the 1970s and 1980s but have only recently been subjected to intense scrutiny.
Professor Darren Curnoe from the University of New South Wales was one of the team leaders that looked at the remains.
“We’ve discovered a new population of prehistoric humans whose skulls are an unusual mosaic of primitive features, like those we see in our ancestors of hundreds of thousands of years ago, some modern traits, which are similar features to what we see in living humans, as well as some unusual features,” he said.
He says the Red Deer Cave people are anatomically unique in the human evolutionary tree.
“They have rounded brain cases but their brow ridges are quite prominent, their skull bones are quite thick, their faces are short and quite flat and they’re tucked under the frontal part of the brains – they’re modern characteristics,” he said.
“But they have a broad nose, the jaws jut very forward of the face and they lack a human-like chin.
“Their brains were moderate in size and the frontal part of the brain, what we call the frontal lobe, was quite modern-looking, but the posterior parts are quite primitive-looking, and they also had very large molar teeth.”
He says the Red Deer people would have shared the land with modern-looking people as farming was starting in China as recently as 14,000 years ago.
“One of the sites of the human remains are dated to around 14,500 years ago and the other site 11,500 years ago,” he said.
“And at this time in China there were very modern-looking people who were living immediately to the east and to the south of this population … and these modern humans were in fact beginning the early stages of farming, so there were economic transitions that were going on.”
The scientists have called the group the Red Deer Cave People after one of the main sites where they come from, Maludong, which literally means Red Deer Cave.
But they have stopped short of claiming the discovery of a new species.
“At this stage we’ve actually been quite reluctant to classify them, that is to place them into a species, whether it be Homo sapiens or something else,” Professor Curnoe said.
“In the study of human evolution, there’s a major ongoing controversy, or an open question if you like, about just how we actually define our own species Homo sapiens, biologically.
“They are a human-like group, technically we call them hominids. They’re clearly a population that’s quite closely related to humans and possibly closely related also to the Neanderthals.”
There has been one unsuccessful attempt to extract DNA from the remains, and Professor Curnoe says they are trying again.
“If we could extract ancient DNA from these fossils, that would really be a wonderful thing because it would allow us to really decisively test some of these ideas that we’ve developed, hypotheses that we’ve developed directly from the bones themselves,” he said.
“We’ve actually expanded our collaboration to work with a couple of international ancient DNA laboratory specialist groups who have been very successful in amplifying ancient DNA.”
Source: PLos One
