Archaic Homo
Posted on 03/07/2017 4:00:40 PM PST by blam
Since their discovery in 2010, the extinct ice age humans called Denisovans have been known only from bits of DNA, taken from a sliver of bone in the Denisova Cave in Siberia, Russia. Now, two partial skulls from eastern China are emerging as prime candidates for showing what these shadowy people may have looked like.
In a paper published this week in Science, a Chinese-U.S. team presents 105,000- to 125,000-year-old fossils they call “archaic Homo.” They note that the bones could be a new type of human or an eastern variant of Neandertals. But although the team avoids the word, “everyone else would wonder whether these might be Denisovans,” which are close cousins to Neandertals, says paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London.
The new skulls “definitely” fit what you’d expect from a Denisovan, adds paleoanthropologist María Martinón-Torres of the University College London—“something with an Asian flavor but closely related to Neandertals.” But because the investigators have not extracted DNA from the skulls, “the possibility remains a speculation.”
Back in December 2007, archaeologist Zhan-Yang Li of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing was wrapping up his field season in the town of Lingjing, near the city of Xuchang in the Henan province in China (about 4000 kilometers from the Denisova Cave), when he spotted some beautiful quartz stone tools eroding out of the sediments. He extended the field season for two more days to extract them. On the very last morning, his team discovered a yellow piece of rounded skull cap protruding from the muddy floor of the pit, in the same layer where he had found the tools.
The team went back for another six seasons and managed to find 45 more fossils that fit together into two partial crania.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencemag.org ...
If only the Western powers had offered Denisov more support, Lenin’s USSR could have been strangled in its cradle...
Archaic Homo
Microaggression alert
LOL!
Of all the species of humans that ever existed only one survived.
45 more fossils that fit together into two partial crania.
They had democrats back then?
“something with an Asian flavor but closely related to Neandertals.”
Maybe Denisovans was related to the current Denny’s restaurant chain.
‘The Denisovans’. Season 1, episode 12: Mister Spok fondles the skull of a Denisovan maiden and remarks,”Fascinating. I could place my beer on top of her head.”
LOL, I haven’t seen him since watching The Match Game.
You’re a naughty boy.
Plot element of a future Dr. Who episode?
If they find a pair of testicles, contact Paul Ryan. He needs them.
Lol.
Much better than “Hold my beer”.
Huh? What makes you say Democrats are the same species as us?
Do you have any evidence backing up this ridiculous claim?
Artist's reconstruction
I don’t get it. That’s just an average Frenchman.
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