New fossil evidence gives insight into ancient hominins on Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Source: Xinhua| 2019-05-02 01:42:22|Editor: Mu Xuequan
Video PlayerClose

LONDON, May 1 (Xinhua) -- A 160,000-year-old mandible fossil may indicate that Denisovans, an ancient hominin group, adapted to living on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau long before modern humans even arrived in the region, according to a study published online on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

"The mandible is by far the earliest known hominin fossil on the plateau," one of the authors of the study, Zhang Dongju, told Xinhua. He is an associate professor at Lanzhou University, China.

Denisovans are an extinct sister group to Neanderthals, known only from fossil fragments previously found at Denisova cave in Russia.

A team led by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou University and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA), used ancient protein analysis to study the fossil, which is a hominin lower mandible that was found in a cave in Xiahe in China.

The team found that the mandible's owner belonged to a population that was closely related to the Denisovans.

These ancient hominins occupied the plateau in the Middle Pleistocene and "successfully adapted to high-altitude low-oxygen environments long before the regional arrival of modern Homo sapiens", according to Zhang.

"Our analysis paves the way towards a better understanding of the evolutionary history of Middle Pleistocene hominins in East Asia," said Jean-Jacques Hublin, director of the Department of Human Evolution at the MPI-EVA.

TOP STORIES
EDITOR’S CHOICE
MOST VIEWED
EXPLORE XINHUANET
010020070750000000000000011105091380279091
国产无码在线观看免费在线,37pao国产成视频,日韩一区二区视频在线,国产国产人免费人成免费视频麻豆
亚洲春色中文字幕我是洋洋 | 亚州Av片在线劲爆看 | 日韩精品中文字幕在线观 | 亚洲乱码国产乱码精品精 | 在线观看欧美性爱第二页 | 一本久久知道综合久久 |