Nature 459, 910-911 (18 June 2009) doi:10.1038/459910a; Published online 17 June 2009
The mystery ape of Pleistocene Asia
Russell L. Ciochon
Russell L. Ciochon is chair of anthropology at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242, USA. This Essay is based on a contribution to the book Out of Africa I: Who, When and Where? (eds., Fleagle, J. G. et al. Springer, 2009).
Email: russell-ciochon@uiowa.edu
Abstract: Fossil finds of early humans in south-east Asia may actually be the remains of an unknown ape. Russell Ciochon says that many palaeoanthropologists — including himself — have been mistaken.
Fourteen years ago, a Nature paper by my colleagues and I described a 1.9-million-year-old human jaw fragment from Longgupo in Sichuan province, China. The ancient date in itself was spectacular. Previous evidence had suggested that human ancestors arrived in east Asia from Africa about 1 million years ago, in the form of Homo erectus. Longgupo nearly doubled that estimate. But even more exciting — and contentious — was our claim that the jaw was related to H. habilis, a species of distinctly African origin. If this descendant of H. habilis had arrived so early into south-east Asia, then it probably gave rise to H. erectus in the Far East, rather than H. erectus itself sweeping west to east.
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