Human fossil discovery complicates evolution research
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E-mail Xinhua, March 30, 2012
As early as 1989, Chinese scientists found the fossils of a relatively complete skull, with the lower jaw and some teeth, and other bones of the rare people in a cave in the southwest province of Yunnan. But study of the fossils only went into full swing after Australian scientists joined in 2008.
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Fossil of Red Deer Cave People |
Scientists also found large number of mammal remains -- a type of ancient red deer -- in the cave along with primitive cooking tools made of deer bones, indicating the neolithic people lived on hunting and had a penchant for home-cooked venison.
"That is why we named it Maludong Ren, or Red Deer Cave People," Ji said.
In an interview with the Guardian this month, Curnoe said multiple populations lived at the end of the ice age in Asia, probably representing different evolutionary lines: the Red Deer Cave People in East Asia, the "Hobbit" on the island of Flores in Indonesia, and modern humans widely dispersed from northeast Asia to Australia.
"This paints an amazing picture of diversity, one we had no clue about until this last decade," he was quoted by the paper as saying.
Huang Weiwen, a researcher with Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the distinct features of the Red Deer Cave People from other populations indicate that modern humans might have evolved from more than one origin.
He said the latest discovery is "very significant" and may provide additional clues to the cross-continental migration and interbreeding of the archaic humans at the end of the fourth ice age.
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