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The skull was unearthed in China’s Hubei Province in 1990. However, the skull was badly deformed during fossilisation.
The researchers used sophisticated scanning and digital reconstruction techniques to determine the original shape of the skull, which is between 940,000 and 1.1 million years old, and compared it to more than 100 other human fossils. (Representative Image)
A million-year-old human skull found in China has suggested that our species, Homo sapiens, likely began to emerge at least half a million years earlier than was thought, according to researchers.
The skull was unearthed in China’s Hubei Province in 1990. However, the skull was badly deformed during fossilisation.
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According to Reuters, researchers used sophisticated scanning anrwr4d digital reconstruction techniques to determine the original shape of the skull, which is between 940,000 and 1.1 million years old, and compared it to more than 100 other human fossils.
“It has a long, low skull and receding forehead behind a strong browridge, but the estimated brain size is the largest so far for any hominin of that age. The face is big but with flat and forward-facing cheekbones, and a large nose with a projecting nasal bridge, but without the midfacial prominence we find in Neanderthals,” anthropologist and study co-author Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London said.
BBC quoted the scientists as saying that their analysis “totally changes” our understanding of human evolution and, if correct, it would certainly rewrite a key early chapter in our history.
The research, published in the journal Science, was done by a team that included scientists from a university in China and the UK’s Natural History Museum.
“From the very beginning, when we got the result, we thought it was unbelievable. How could that be so deep into the past?” said Prof Xijun Ni of Fudan University, who co-led the analysis.
“But we tested it again and again to test all the models, use all the methods, and we are now confident about the result, and we’re actually very excited.”
According to CNN, the skull is one of the two partially mineralised specimens unearthed in 1989 and 1990 in an area known as Yunxian in Shiyan, located in Hubei province in central China.
China
September 26, 2025, 02:28 IST
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