Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The early fossils shown are not considered ancestors to Homo sapiens but are closely related to ancestors and are therefore important to the study of the lineage. After 1.5 million years ago (extinction of Paranthropus ), all fossils shown are human (genus Homo ).
In 1972, fragmentary fossils of anatomically modern humans were found at Chouqu and Gangzilin, in Zuojhen District, Tainan, in fossil beds exposed by erosion of the Cailiao River. Though some of the fragments are believed to be more recent, three cranial fragments and a molar tooth have been dated as between 20,000 and 30,000 years old.
Stone tools found at the Shangchen site in China and dated to 2.12 million years ago are considered the earliest known evidence of hominins outside Africa, surpassing Dmanisi hominins found in Georgia by 300,000 years, although whether these hominins were an early species in the genus Homo or another hominin species is unknown.
The fossils and stone tools recovered at Dmanisi range in age from 1.85 to 1.77 million years old, [6] [7] [8] making the Dmanisi hominins the earliest well-dated hominin fossils in Eurasia and the best preserved fossils of early Homo from a single site so early in time, though earlier fossils and artifacts have been found in Asia.
Early Eurasian Homo sapiens fossils have been found in Israel and Greece, dated to 194,000–177,000 and 210,000 years old respectively. These fossils seem to represent failed dispersal attempts by early Homo sapiens , who were likely replaced by local Neanderthal populations.
New research shows that Homo sapiens traveled from Africa to East Asia and toward Australia up to 86,000 years ago.
The oldest Homo erectus fossils appear almost contemporaneously, shortly after two million years ago, both in Africa and in the Caucasus. The earliest well-dated Eurasian H. erectus site (if the fossils are indeed H. erectus — see Dmanisi hominins) is Dmanisi in Georgia, securely dated to 1.8 Ma.
Early human (or hominin) fossils, originally named Homo georgicus and now considered Homo erectus georgicus, were found at Dmanisi between 1991 and 2005. At 1.8 million years old, they are now believed to be a subspecies of Homo erectus and not a separate species of Homo. These fossils represent the earliest known human presence in the Caucasus.