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3w ago

Rebuilt Million-Year-Old Chinese Skull Tied to Denisovan-Linked Lineage, Pushing Homo Splits Earlier

With no recoverable ancient DNA, the team’s early-divergence claim remains a provisional morphological hypothesis.

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
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
Image

Overview

  • An international team published in Science a digital reconstruction of the crushed Yunxian 2 cranium from Hubei, China, dated to roughly 940,000–1.1 million years.
  • Researchers used advanced CT scanning, structured‑light imaging and virtual modeling to correct severe deformation, then compared the cranium with more than 100 hominin fossils.
  • The analysis places Yunxian 2 not in Homo erectus but within an Asian Homo longi lineage linked to the Denisovans.
  • The authors propose that five major large‑brained Homo clades began diverging more than a million years ago, a revision they say could clarify the long‑debated ‘Muddle in the Middle’ and elevate East Asia’s role.
  • Outside experts welcome the reconstruction yet urge caution, citing the limits of morphology, the inability to obtain informative ancient DNA from Yunxian 2, and the need for additional fossils or proteomic evidence.