Jinniushan man

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As Jinniushan-man ( Chinese  金牛山猿人 , Pinyin Jinniushan Yuanren , English Jinniushan Man ) one is fossil of the genus Homo from the late Lower Paleolithic (= Middle Pleistocene called) in 1984 in a former limestone cave on Mount Jinniushan the village Sitian, City Dashiqiao , Yingkou Prefecture , Liaoning Province , People's Republic of China. The find was assigned an age of approx. 260,000 years, according to another dating it is 195,000 to 165,000 years old.

Find description

The find includes numerous fragments of a skull, which was severely fragmented during the excavation work with considerable loss of substance, with largely preserved dentition of the upper jaw, as well as other bones attributed to the same individual: a left ulna , a large fragment from the area of ​​the left pelvis , six vertebrae , two fragments of left ribs , a left kneecap and various bones of the feet and hands.

Reconstruction and interpretation

The fossil was reconstructed by Wu Rukang and his assistant Zhao Zongyi at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing . Due to the strong fragmentation of the skull bones, most of the fragments of the brain skull and the facial skull show no direct connection to each other even after the reconstruction, but were related to each other by means of substitute material. The reconstruction was interpreted to mean that the skull had a volume of 1260 to 1400 cm² and had features that correspond on the one hand to those of Homo erectus and on the other hand resemble those of the early Homo sapiens . The Chinese researchers classified the find as archaic Homo sapiens and - like the Dali man - considered evidence of the model they represent of the multiregional origin of modern humans , which, however, contradicts the genetic analyzes of spread known today of man and the out-of-Africa theory based on it , on the basis of which he would have to be placed on Homo erectus . The paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer pointed out in 2012 that the fossil could possibly belong to the Denisova people .

Based on the structure of the teeth, which were compared to those of an Australian find of about the same age, as well as the pelvis and the cubit, it is assumed that the fossil could have been a young adult who was around the age of 20 died and was about 168 cm tall. The detailed analysis of body characteristics published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in February 2006 described the find as belonging to a cold-adapted population of the genus Homo , but avoided assigning it to a specific one Art . The Neanderthals, who were also adapted to the cold, lived in Europe at the same time .

Monument of the People's Republic of China

The site of the discovery of the Jinniushan man ( Chinese  金牛山 遗址 , Pinyin Jīnniúshān yízhǐ ) in Dashiqiao has been on the list of monuments of the People's Republic of China (3-183) since 1988 .

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karen R. Rosenberg, Lü Zuné and Christopher B. Ruff: Body size, body proportions, and encephalization in a Middle Pleistocene archaic human from northern China. In: PNAS , Volume 103, No. 10, 2006, pp. 3552-3556, doi : 10.1073 / pnas.0508681103
  2. ↑ Chen Tiemei et al .: Antiquity of Homo sapiens in China. In: Nature . Volume 368, 1994, pp. 55-56, doi: 10.1038 / 368055a0
  3. ↑ Jinniushan on Peter Brown's website , accessed January 9, 2016
  4. ↑ Chris Stringer: The status of Homo heidelbergensis (Schoetensack 1908). In: Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews. Volume 21, No. 3, 2012, pp. 101-107, doi: 10.1002 / evan.21311
    The science journalist Ed Yong had already argued a year earlier: Patchwork people: Our hybrid origins. In: New Scientist . Volume 211, No. 2823, 2011, p. 37.