‘Absolute surprise’: Homo erectus skulls found in China are almost 1.8 million years old — the oldest evidence of the ancient human relatives in East Asia

The Sundarban

The reconstruction of the two original Yunxian Homo erectus fossils, stumbled on in 1989 and 1990. There is currently no reconstruction of the third Yunxian skull.
(Image credit score: Photo Credit score: Xiaobo Feng and Hua Tu)

Three Homo erectus skulls beforehand unearthed in China are almost 1.8 million years old, around 600,000 years older than originally thought, a contemporary survey finds.

This revelation has made the Yunxian skulls from Hubei province the oldest evidence of our early human relatives, identified as hominins, in East Asia, according to analyze published Wednesday (Feb. 18) in the journal Science Advances.

“What this means is that we need to consider pushing the origin of Homo erectus back” to around 2.6 million years ago, Bae said in an electronic mail.

H. erectus has lengthy been thought about the first human relative to head away Africa, with 1.78 million to 1.85 million-year-old fossils found at the Dmanisi area in Georgia being the earliest evidence of humans in Asia. But stone instruments stumbled on at two internet sites in China dated to 2.1 million and 2.43 million years ago have sophisticated that checklist, since they predate specialists’ theory of when H. erectus originated.

The genuine date of the three Yunxian skulls, which were found between 1989 and 2022, has lengthy been debated, but they were beforehand thought about to be around 1 million years old in response to the age of animal enamel found within attain, despite the fact that one survey dated them to around 1.1 million years ago using electron spin resonance and uranium-series dating. So when the opportunity arose to strive a contemporary dating methodology at the area, Bae and his colleagues thought it used to be a factual chance to revisit the debate.

Their crew broken-down a blueprint known as cosmogenic nuclide burial dating to determine the age of the quartz found in the sediment layers where the skulls were found. This dating methodology measures the half of-lifestyles of two chemical variants — Aluminum-26 and Beryllium-10 — to determine how unparalleled time has handed since the quartz used to be uncovered to cosmic rays.

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The Yunxian Homo erectus excavation area in China (Image credit score: Photo Credit score: Guangjun Shen)

This dating methodology revealed the hominin fossils were roughly 1.77 million years old, which is about 600,000 years older than the oldest age proposed for the area beforehand, Bae said.

Because the contemporary date is youthful than the stone instruments stumbled on in other places in China, there is aloof a properly-organized time gap of around 600,000 years between the earliest fossil evidence and the earliest instrument evidence, he added.

But since this date is stop in time to the Dmanisi fossils in Georgia, the outcomes imply that H. erectus moved all the intention thru Asia pretty rapidly, Bae said. The dimension and form of the Yunxian skulls, then again, presentations that these hominins had better brains than those found in Dmanisi, despite being a pretty the same age. “This points to important variation in the early hominins outside of Africa,” Karen Baab, a professor of anatomy at Midwestern University in Illinois who used to be no longer involved in the contemporary survey, told Dwell Science in an electronic mail.

Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the Nationwide Ancient past Museum in London who used to be no longer involved in the contemporary survey, told Dwell Science in an electronic mail that “it would indeed be remarkable” if the Yunxian skulls were nearly 1.8 million years old, but “placing Yunxian at such a great age would put it completely out of sync with the rest of the fossil record.”

According to outdated work by Stringer and his colleagues, the Yunxian fossils would possibly perchance per chance honest belong to a neighborhood that gave rise to the Denisovans, which their model suggests emerged around 1.2 million years ago.

The contemporary date for the Yunxian fossils, if blooming, would possibly perchance per chance honest moreover require specialists to reconsider the origin of the ancestor to our bear species, Homo sapiens, Stringer said. “I would suggest that further work on the dating of the site is certainly needed!”

Tu, H., Feng, X., Luo, L., Lai, Z., Granger, D., Bae, C., & Shen., G. (2026). The oldest in situ Homo erectus crania in jap Asia: The Yunxian area dates to ~1.77 Ma. Science Advances, 12, eady2270. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.ady2270

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Sophie is a U.K.-basically basically based workers author at Dwell Science. She covers a big alternative of subject issues, having beforehand reported on study spanning from bonobo communication to the first water in the universe. Her work has also appeared in outlets including Novel Scientist, The Observer and BBC Wildlife, and she used to be shortlisted for the Association of British Science Writers’ 2025 “Newcomer of the Year” award for her freelance work at Novel Scientist. Sooner than becoming a science journalist, she done a doctorate in evolutionary anthropology from the University of Oxford, where she spent four years looking at why some chimps are better at using instruments than others.

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