A skull discovered in 2019 in eastern China has puzzled scientists because it is unlike any human skull ever discovered and could rewrite our evolutionary history.
And if studies carried out on the skulls are found to be correct, it is possible that another branch will be added to the branches from which the Neanderthals were born, which necessitates further study of the tree of life. of human.
The 300,000-year-old skull belongs to a 12- or 13-year-old swallow.
The features closely resemble the structure of Denisova, an extinct human species of the genus Homo, which shared a common ancestor with Neanderthals and migrated from Siberia to Southeast Asia.
Scientists say this strange skull shape has never been recorded in the Hominin fossil groups of the late Pleistocene period in East Asia. This is not the first time that human remains have gone against the evolutionary path that scientists consider to be human.
The remains, found in Morocco in 2017, show features similar to Homo sapiens and indicate that humans may have appeared much earlier than previously thought.
Recent discoveries of ancient human remains in Palestine and Greece dating back some 200,000 years suggest that human ancestors may have left Africa much earlier than previously thought.
There is also paleontological and genetic evidence indicating that ancient humans interbred with Neanderthals and Denisovans, their cousins, further complicating lineages.
And Neanderthals are one of the species of the genus Homo that settled in Europe and parts of West and Central Asia.
