Ancient Skull Found in China Pushes Back Human Evolution by 400,000 Years

Yunxian 2 skull successful China’s Hubei Provincial Museum. Credit: Gary Todd / Wikimedia Commons / CC0

An past skull recovered successful China has shifted the communicative of human evolution, suggesting our household histrion branched overmuch earlier than scientists thought. A survey led by Xiaobo Feng of the School of History and Culture astatine Shanxi University reports that the million-year-old fossil from Yunxian, Hubei province, belongs to a lineage that divided from modern humans astir 1.3 cardinal years ago.

The finding, published Thursday successful the journal Science, pushes backmost the root of cardinal Homo groups by astir 400,000 years.

The partial skull, labeled Yunxian 2, was pulled from river-terrace sediments on the Hanjiang River successful the precocious 1980s. It rested adjacent chromatic tools and the bones of extinct elephants and rhinos, hinting astatine a once-rich ecosystem connected the Chinese plains.

Heavy unit from overlying world warped the bone, leaving its existent signifier hidden down cracks and bends. Several earlier attempts to work the fossil stalled due to the fact that the harm masked some its outline and galore tiny surfaces.

Technology unlocks secrets of a damaged skull

Feng’s squad turned that obstacle into an advantage. They fed thousands of CT slices into caller bundle that tin tag fossil fragments, portion distant the rocky matrix and descent pieces backmost into spot similar a 3-D jigsaw.

The programme adjacent compensated for crushed sections by mirroring the undamaged broadside of the skull. The effect is simply a near-complete virtual cranium that tin beryllium rotated, measured and compared without hazard to the original.

When the layers fell away, a striking signifier emerged. The braincase holds astir 1,143 cubic centimeters (69.75 cubic inches)—larger than earlier Homo erectus yet smaller than today’s average.

Yunxian 2 skull was recovered successful June 1990 astatine Xuetangliangzi tract connected the near slope of Han River. New reconstruction of one-million-years-old skull shows transitional features adjacent to the origins of the Denisovans and Homo sapiens lineages #FossilFriday pic.twitter.com/s3Ex144jnO

— Odyssey to the Far East (@motherlander) September 26, 2025

Its brow ridge is heavy and its look juts guardant similar older species, but different traits look much modern, including a higher feature portion and a reduced ridge astatine the backmost of the head.

That mosaic, the authors conclude, marks it arsenic an aboriginal subordinate of the Homo longi clade, a radical that besides includes the mysterious Denisovans.

Clues constituent to caller subdivision successful quality lineage

The researchers plotted 533 anatomical landmarks from Yunxian 2 against 178 different fossils and surviving people.

In that three-dimensional map, the Chinese specimen clustered with Asian mid-Pleistocene crania specified arsenic Harbin, Dali and Jinniushan, lasting isolated from some Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.

Statistical modeling placed it heavy wrong the H. longi branch, which the survey considers a sister to the sapiens line.

Advanced statistical dating tests traced the divided betwixt the 2 branches to astir 1.32 cardinal years ago, agelong earlier earlier familial estimates of 500,000 to 700,000 years.

That deeper disagreement implies that Denisovans, Neanderthals and modern humans each walked abstracted evolutionary tracks for a acold longer span than erstwhile believed.

It besides hints that the familial mixing seen successful aboriginal skeletons happened among groups that had already traveled chiseled paths.

Yunxian skull reveals transitional features

Feng and colleagues constitute that Yunxian 2 lies adjacent to the past communal ancestor of our ain taxon and H. longi. They reason that its premix of primitive and modern features captures a pivotal infinitesimal successful the emergence of aboriginal humans.

Outside experts called the enactment a invited measurement toward sorting the tangle of mid-Pleistocene fossils.

Robin Dennell, a paleontologist not progressive successful the study, said the cautious integer reconstruction sets a caller benchmark for reviving crushed remains, though helium urged caution successful assigning hard taxon names until much bones crook up.

The survey shows however integer forensics tin rescue accusation from past relics and rewrite textbooks. With the Yunxian skull present restored, researchers program to excavate deeper layers astatine the tract and analyse the recently recovered Yunxian 3 cranium. They purpose to trial whether it shares the aforesaid longi signature oregon represents yet different branch.