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1h ago

Digital Reconstruction of 1-Million-Year-Old Chinese Skull Points to Early Homo Longi Lineage

A morphology-led study places the crushed Yunxian 2 cranium near the Denisovan branch, prompting calls for molecular confirmation after it proposes much earlier Homo splits.

This artist's impression shows the head of an adult male individual who lived roughly 1 million years ago in China's Hubei Province, based on the digital reconstruction of a fossilized archaic human skull, called Yunxian 2 in this image released on September 25, 2025. Jiannan Bai and Xijun Ni/Handout via REUTERS
Image
This artist's impression shows a group of archaic humans hunting in a forest roughly 1 million years ago in China's Hubei Province. The head of the adult male individual holding a wooden spear in the foreground is based on the digital reconstruction of a fossilized archaic skull, called Yunxian 2, unearthed in 1990, in this image released on September 25, 2025. Jiannan Bai and Xijun Ni/Handout via REUTERS
an ancient human-like skull that has been partly squashed

Overview

  • Researchers CT-scanned and digitally rebuilt the distorted skull, dated to roughly 940,000–1.1 million years, then compared its anatomy with more than 100 fossils.
  • The team assigns Yunxian 2 to the Asian Homo longi clade linked to Denisovans, overturning its long-assumed placement in Homo erectus.
  • Statistical analyses estimate divergence times of about 1.38 million years for Neanderthals, 1.2 million for the Homo longi clade, and roughly 1.02 million for the Homo sapiens clade.
  • The authors propose that five major Homo branches were already separating over a million years ago, offering a potential window into the long-debated “muddle in the middle.”
  • Several specialists question the deep split dates and morphology-only placement, noting that DNA is unlikely to survive in such an old fossil and protein tests at the site were uninformative.