There may have been another human species, theHomo juluensis: two researchers from theUniversity of Hawaiiwho argues that this species includes ancient human groups such as Denisovaour ancestors with a history still partly unknown.
The work, according to scientists, would help clear up some of the confusion about the different types of ancient human-like species that coexisted in the region during the late Middle Pleistocene and early Late Pleistocene, a period between about 300,000 and 50,000 years ago.
THE’Homo juluensis would have lived about 300,000 years ago in East Asiahunting wild horses in small groups and making stone tools and perhaps processed animal skins to survive before disappear about 50,000 years ago.
According to what the authors reported, the new species includes the enigmatic Denisovaa population known primarily through DNA evidence of some physical remains found in Siberia and some fossils found in Tibet And Laos.
The conditional and cautions are a must, as further research is needed to test this relationship, which is mainly based on similarities between fossils of jaws and teeth coming from these different sites.
The breakthrough in research came thanks to a new way of organize fossil evidencenow accommodated in a clearer, more constructed system ad hoc to sort and understand these ancient human fossils from China, Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia.
This study elucidates a hominin fossil record that includes everything that cannot easily be assigned to Homo erectus, Homo Neanderthalensis, or Homo sapiens – explains Christopher J. Bae, first author of the work – Although we started this project several years ago, we do not we were waiting to be able to propose a new species of hominid (human ancestors) and therefore to be able to organize fossils from Asia into different groups
This work is important because it helps scientists, but really all of us, to better understand the complex history of human evolution in Asia, filling in some of the gaps in our understanding of our ancient relatives.
The work was published on Nature Communications.
Sources: University of Hawaii / Nature Communications
