BEIJING: Anthropologists have revealed that the newly found species of early human who died out more than 70,000 years ago may have survived living among modern humans until around 14,000 years ago.
The anthropologists discovered a primitive-looking thigh bone among the remains of a group of enigmatic ‘modern’ humans known as Red Deer Cave people in China.
While skulls found in the cave in Yunnan Province, China, were thought to belong to a primitive form of Homo sapiens, the thigh bone seems to be from a different species of human.
The researchers say the bone matches those from far older species like Homo habilis – which lived between 2.4 and 1.4 million years ago – and Homo erectus, that died out 70,000 years ago.
Professor Ji Xueping, from the Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology in China, said: ‘Its young age suggests the possibility that primitive-looking humans could have survived until very late in our evolution, but we need to careful as it is just one bone.
‘The unique environment and climate of southwest China resulting from the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau may have provided a refuge for human diversity, perhaps with pre-modern groups surviving very late.’
The discovery is expected to be controversial as modern humans are only thought to have lived alongside the Neanderthals of Europe and Ewst Asia and the Denisovans of southern Siberia.
Even these extinct species are thought to have died out 40,000 years ago shortly after modern humans spread from Africa into the region.
However, unlike these robust and heavy set extinct human species, the thigh bone discovered at Red Deer Cave, also called Maludong, is small and narrow, much like in Homo habilis. The neck of the femur is long while the area where the muscles were attached to the hop is very large and faces backwards.
Researchers behind the analysis of the bone, which is published in the journal Public Library of Science One, believe the person it belonged to would have had a small body mass of just 50kg or less than eight stone, which was light by the standards of Ice Age humans.
The bone was first unearthed along with dozens of other bones and skull fragments in the cave during an excavation in 1989. Dating has shown they were 14,000 years old. The remains of a prehistoric deer, which appears to have been cooked, were also found in the cave, giving them their name.