Massive cranium from Harbin in northeastern China establishes a new Middle Pleistocene human lineage  

作　　者：Xijun Ni Qiang Ji Wensheng Wu Qingfeng Shao Yannan Ji Chi Zhang Lei Liang Junyi Ge Zhen Guo Jinhua Li Qiang Li Rainer Grun Chris Stringer 

机构地区：[1]Hebei GEO University,Shijiazhuang 050031,China [2]CAS Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment,Chinese Academy of Science,Beijing 100044,China [3]CAS Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences,Chinese Academy of Science,Beijing 100104,China [4]University of Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing 100049,China [5]Key Laboratory of Virtual Geographic Environment,Ministry of Education,Nanjing Normal University,Nanjing 210023,China [6]China Geo-Environmental Monitoring Institute,Beijing 100081,China [7]Key Laboratory of Earth and Planetary Physics,Innovation Academy for Earth Science,Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing 100029,China [8]Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution,Griffith University,Nathan,QLD,Australia [9]Research School of Earth Sciences,The Australian National University,Canberra,ACT,Australia [10]Centre for Human Evolution Research,Department of Earth Sciences,Natural History Museum,London,UK

出　　处：《The Innovation》2021年第3期43-50,共8页创新（英文）

基　　金：This project has been supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(41842039,41625005,41888101,41988101,41877430,41977380);the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences(CAS)(XDB26030300,XDA20070203,XDA19050100);the People’s Government of Hebei Province(Z20177187);the China Geological Survey(DD20190601);the Science Foundation of Hebei GEO University(TS2017-001);the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program(2019QZKK0705).

摘　　要：It has recently become clear that several human lineages coexisted with Homo sapiens during the late Middle and Late Pleistocene.Here,we report an archaic human fossil that throws new light on debates concerning the diversification of the Homo genus and the origin of H.sapiens.The fossil was recovered in Harbin city in northeastern China,with a minimum uranium-series age of 146 ka.This cranium is one of the best preserved Middle Pleistocene human fossils.Its massive size,with a large cranial capacity(
1,420 mL)falling in the range of modern humans,is combined with a mosaic of primitive and derived characters.It differs from all the other named Homo species by presenting a combination of features,such as long and low cranial vault,a wide and low face,large and almost square orbits,gently curved but massively developed supraorbital torus,flat and low cheekbones with a shallow canine fossa,and a shallow palate with thick alveolar bone supporting very large molars.The excellent preservation of the Harbin cranium advances our understanding of several less-complete late Middle Pleistocene fossils from China,which have been interpreted as local evolutionary intermediates between the earlier species Homo erectus and later H.sapiens.Phylogenetic analyses based on parsimony criteria and Bayesian tip-dating suggest that the Harbin cranium and some other Middle Pleistocene human fossils from China,such as those from Dali and Xiahe,form a third East Asian lineage,which is a part of the sister group of the H.sapiens lineage.Our analyses of such morphologically distinctive archaic human lineages from Asia,Europe,and Africa suggest that the diversification of the Homo genus may have had a much deeper timescale than previously presumed.Sympatric isolation of small populations combined with stochastic long-distance dispersals is the best fitting biogeographical model for interpreting the evolution of the Homo genus.

关 键 词：human phylogeny human cranium fossil human dispersal human diversification 

分 类 号：X70[环境科学与工程—环境工程]