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3h ago

Rebuilt Million-Year-Old Skull Links China Fossil to Denisovan-Lineage and Earlier Homo Splits

Comparative anatomy suggests deeper divergences than genetic models, a conclusion independent experts say requires further fossil and molecular tests.

Image
Million-Year-Old Skull Pushes Back Homo Sapiens' Origins By 400,000 Years
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

  • Published in Science, the study digitally reconstructs the crushed Yunxian 2 cranium using CT and high‑resolution scans and dates it to roughly 0.94–1.10 million years ago.
  • The analysis places the fossil within an Asian Homo longi clade that the authors say encompasses Denisovans and the Harbin “Dragon Man” skull.
  • The proposed phylogeny estimates Neanderthals diverged about 1.38 million years ago, the H. longi clade around 1.2 million years ago, and the H. sapiens lineage near 1.02 million years ago, implying Denisovans are closer to modern humans than Neanderthals.
  • Yunxian 2 shows a long, low cranial vault with a relatively large brain, flat forward‑facing cheekbones, and a projecting nasal bridge, features the team argues separate it from Homo erectus.
  • Outside specialists praise the reconstruction but call the broader timeline provisional, urging analyses of the third Yunxian skull and attempts at ancient DNA or proteomic confirmation.