'Red Deer Cave people' may be new species

[hardaker]

Here's another one, folks.
'Red Deer Cave people' may be new species of human
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/ ... cies-human

"The fossilised remains of stone age people recovered from two caves in south west China may belong to a new species of human that survived until around the dawn of agriculture.

The partial skulls and other bone fragments, which are from at least four individuals and are between 14,300 and 11,500 years old, have an extraordinary mix of primitive and modern anatomical features that stunned the researchers who found them.

Named the Red Deer Cave people, after their apparent penchant for home-cooked venison, they are the most recent human remains found anywhere in the world that do not closely resemble modern humans.

The individuals differ from modern humans in their jutting jaws, large molar teeth, prominent brows, thick skulls, flat faces and broad noses. Their brains were of average size by ice age standards."

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Ad ... ne.0031918
Background

Later Pleistocene human evolution in East Asia remains poorly understood owing to a scarcity of well described, reliably classified and accurately dated fossils. Southwest China has been identified from genetic research as a hotspot of human diversity, containing ancient mtDNA and Y-DNA lineages, and has yielded a number of human remains thought to derive from Pleistocene deposits. We have prepared, reconstructed, described and dated a new partial skull from a consolidated sediment block collected in 1979 from the site of Longlin Cave (Guangxi Province). We also undertook new excavations at Maludong (Yunnan Province) to clarify the stratigraphy and dating of a large sample of mostly undescribed human remains from the site.
Methodology/Principal Findings

We undertook a detailed comparison of cranial, including a virtual endocast for the Maludong calotte, mandibular and dental remains from these two localities. Both samples probably derive from the same population, exhibiting an unusual mixture of modern human traits, characters probably plesiomorphic for later Homo, and some unusual features. We dated charcoal with AMS radiocarbon dating and speleothem with the Uranium-series technique and the results show both samples to be from the Pleistocene-Holocene transition: ~14.3-11.5 ka.
Conclusions/Significance

Our analysis suggests two plausible explanations for the morphology sampled at Longlin Cave and Maludong. First, it may represent a late-surviving archaic population, perhaps paralleling the situation seen in North Africa as indicated by remains from Dar-es-Soltane and Temara, and maybe also in southern China at Zhirendong. Alternatively, East Asia may have been colonised during multiple waves during the Pleistocene, with the Longlin-Maludong morphology possibly reflecting deep population substructure in Africa prior to modern humans dispersing into Eurasia.

[Minimalist]

How are we using the term "species" here, Chris?

[Cognito]

Min, this fellow doesn't look HSS to me, but who knows if he is a hybrid or sub-species.

[Ernie L]

I think this is just amazing.

11,000 years ago ...so they were around when the new world was being populated for (ahem) the first time.
Imagine if they had made it to the new world. What am I saying... with the way the new discoveries keep popping up lately..perhaps they did.

With those check bones as muscle attachment points he must have been able to break open walnuts with just his teeth. Perhaps there is a reason for all those yeti stories after all..nah..
....

[hardaker]

Well Min, By now you should know how I spell species:
n-o-o-k-i-e

[Cognito]

Well Min, By now you should know how I spell species:
n-o-o-k-i-e

Well Chris, you know how it appears at present ... it's now difficult to tell who was doing whom. Until just a couple of years ago it was anathema to believe that Neanderthals were getting it on with Sapiens, but you and I are now known to possess 1-4% Neanderthal genetics (actually, I think we two are pushing 10%). Then along comes the Denisovan genome and the partay was on. I still suspect that the Denisovans are either descendents of H Heidelbergensis or H erectus.

The skull and its location is interesting since, to me, it screams latter-day Asian H erectus survivors. It would be a justification of Fred Budinger's views while he was the Site Arch at Calico that these were the people who originally settled in that location, apparently crossing Beringea very early in the past (as alluded to by Ernie) to wind up there as well as other locations on the West Coast, especially San Diego and environs.

You know as well as I that somebody was kicking around the Americas at a very early date, leaving behind primitive tools and traces of occupation. We just don't know who yet and arch's remain concerned about mentioning dates that are too early for breakfast consumption.

I hope somebody in China has enough sense coupled with money to take DNA samples of those teeth for mtDNA analysis. My bet? The results will look similar to the Denisovan genome that Svante Paabo et al sequenced. Life is just getting more and more interesting.

[Digit]

Southwest China has been identified from genetic research as a hotspot of human diversity,

Which suggests that the original inhabitants were, as suggested by the Chinese, Erectus, there not having been time for them to be variants of HSS.

Roy.

[Cognito]

I hadn't noticed earlier the attempts at recovering DNA material. Hopefully, they will be successful in the near future just to satisfy everyone's curiosity. Unfortunately, unless an autosomal DNA analysis is performed, the results could be skewed.

[hardaker]

Howdy Cog,
The thing I like about this discovery, and like that at Flores Island -- it is the idea of refugia. Like Mysterious island and the Lost World, it seems there were stands of earlier species still hunkering away while Hss was somewhere else, or as in this case, nearby. The whole idea is so refreshing, so much more real. For decades, anthropologists seemed to be under the impression that evolution was some temporal, machine-like operation and that species died en masse when another arose, or because when another arose, they killed off their predecessors en masse. They were only working with the evidence so I guess they should get some slack, but it was always seemingly black and white, on or off re: species on this planet at any given time. Personally, when I saw those 400k wooden spears and javelins from northern Germany, and other wood and bone tool -- alongside the same tired unchanging half-million year long stone tech tradition generally described for Erectus/heidelberg in Europe -- the whole picture began to change. Stupid, dumb, simple tools with no innovations for hundreds of thousands of years , and that's all we see. Then this site comes up and those dumb old simple tools are making masterpieces for a culture in love with extreme cold. It just blows the socks off the old school who generally believed Homo was nothing until we became sapiens. But we became 'sapient' a long time before guys showed up. Those javelins apparently match up very well with the ones going to be tossed in merry ol' Britenglandshire this summer.

[Digit]

Yep! The spears were even 'weighted' as per the modern ones.
As regards the stone technology bit, one thing so often ignored is, 'fit for purpose.'
As you people say, 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it!
'How do you improve the design of a Hammer?
What improvement can you make in the shape of a wheel?
Within the range of materials then available, having once achieved an optimum weight, shape, size etc how can you improve it?
The fact that the designs lasted for so long is not a measure of the designers inability, quite the reverse in fact. The design remained so stable for so long 'cos they had achieved as near perfection as was possible.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

Southwest China has been identified from genetic research as a hotspot of human diversity,

How come they were all blown to bits in the Toba eruption?

[Digit]

They were probably having a bad day Min!

Roy.

[Minimalist]

Am I exaggerating the claims of the Toba crowd?

As I recall, according to them humanity was blasted back to a handful of people living in East Africa.

I just have a little trouble with the concept of a species-specific volcano.

Call me old-fashioned.

[Digit]

Pity the experts don't have the same logical mind as you Min.

Roy.

[Ernie L]

Am I exaggerating the claims of the Toba crowd?

As I recall, according to them humanity was blasted back to a handful of people living in East Africa.

I just have a little trouble with the concept of a species-specific volcano.

Call me old-fashioned.

So I guess you have not heard about the hibernating hominids then................is it the first yet?