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中国发现新的史前人物种? 云南省发现三个头骨,活在14500-11500年前,据说和智人共同生存 James Owen for National Geographic News Published March 14, 2012 A previously unknown type of human—jut-jawed, heavy-browed, deer-eating cave dwellers—may have been identified via Stone Age bones from southern China, according to a controversial new study. The "mystery human fossils" might even represent an entirely new species that existed alongside our own as recently as 11,500 years ago, according to a team of Chinese and Australian researchers.Or the fossils might represent an especially early migration of so-called modern humans out of Africa and into East Asia, the team suggests.Or—as some critical scientists have said—the evidence may tell us something we already know: People come in all shapes and sizes.(Related: "New Type of Ancient Human Found—Descendants Live Today?")Primitive Humans Held On Past Heyday?"We have discovered a new population of prehistoric humans whose skulls are an unusual mosaic of primitive features, like those seen in our ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago," evolutionary biologist Darren Curnoe of the University of New South Wales, said via email."In short, they're anatomically unique among all members of the human evolutionary tree," added Curnoe, a co-author of the new study of the "Red Deer Cave people," published online today in the journal PLoS ONE.The study was principally based on the remains of at least three individuals from Maludong (or Red Deer Cave) in Yunnan Province (map)—fossils that had been excavated in 1989 but hadn't been studied until now.Among the human remains was an abundance of bones from an extinct species of giant deer—suggesting the cave people were hunters with a taste for venison.Stone and antler tools were also found, some of which were likely used to prepare the deer for dinner, researchers say.The team also analyzed a partial skeleton found in 1979 in neighboring Guangxi Province. That human specimen had been encased in stone until the study team removed and reconstructed it.(Read "Malapa Fossils: Part Ape, Part Human" in National Geographic magazine.)The Red Deer Cave LookThe Red Deer Cave dwellers' unusual features included a flat face, a broad nose, a jutting jaw that lacked a chin, large molar teeth, a rounded braincase with prominent brow ridges, and thick skull bones, the researchers say.Their brains were "moderate in size," Curnoe added.Despite this seemingly primitive human design, radiocarbon dating of charcoal from the fossil deposits suggests the Red Deer Cave people lived just 14,500 to 11,500 years ago, the team says—a time by which all other human species, such as Neanderthals, are thought to have died out.That date would make the Red Deer humans even more recent than the famous Homo floresiensis from the Indonesian island of Flores—itself a disputed potential human species. Discovered in 2003, the Flores "hobbits" are dated to no later than 13,000 years ago.(Read "The People Time Forgot: Flores Find" from National Geographic magazine.)Potential New Human Species?The study team is so far reluctant to call their find a new human species."One
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