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
          无码人妻一区二区三区四区av_亚洲精品911在线永久观看_精品一区二区国产在线观看_日韩不卡一区二区视频在线

                  日本精品一级少妇一级 | 亚洲欧洲精品成人久久曰影片 | 一本大道香蕉精品视频在线 | 亚洲国产精品第一页 | 中文1区1区产品乱码免费 | 一区二区三区在线播放 |