Penghu 1 is a fossil jaw (mandible) belonging to an extinct hominin species of the genus Homo. It was collected from seafloor sediments of the Penghu Channel off the coast of Taiwan, dating to sometime in the Middle Pleistocene or Late Pleistocene. The precise classification of the mandible is disputed. Some believe it to be the fossil of a H. erectus , an archaic H. sapiens or possibly a Denisovan.
The fossil was recovered sometime before 2008 by fishermen working in the Penghu Channel between the Penghu Islands and mainland Taiwan and acquired by Tainan citizen Mr. Kun-Yu Tsai. [1] The fossil was found 60–120 meters below the water's surface and about 25 kilometers off the western coast of Taiwan in an area which was once part of the mainland. Sea levels have risen since the last ice age and in consequence have submerged the area where the fossil was recovered. [2] After Mr. Tsai donated the fossil to the National Museum of Natural Science, it was described in 2015 by an international team of Japanese, Taiwanese, and Australian scientists. [1]
Penghu 1 is currently housed at the National Museum of Natural Science in Taichung. [1] [3]
The fossil is stratigraphically dated to younger than 450 kya, based on prehistoric sea-level lowering to either between 190 and 130 kya, or to between 70 and 10 kya. [1]
The fossil consists of a nearly complete right lower jaw with four teeth, including worn molars and premolars. [1] The mandible has a high index of robustness, a robust lateral torus, large molars, and with the help of 3D reconstruction it was revealed to have a large bicondylar breadth. [4] These features help confirm that the fossil was from the middle-late Pleistocene era. [4] The alveoli of its four incisors and right canine have been preserved as well showing their great length. The specimen was assigned to the genus Homo based on its jaw and tooth morphology. The mandible shows a receding anterior surface and lacks a pronounced chin which has helped distinguish it from the species Homo sapiens. However, the fossil exhibited derived traits similar to early Homo habilis including the shortness and width of its jaw. These and other characteristics such as the agenesis of the M3 molar have been sufficient evidence to classify the specimen of the genus Homo. [1]
Although the genus of the Penghu 1 has been widely accepted, there is much discussion on the potential species of the specimen. The Penghu 1 mandible has been described as most similar to Hexian fossils of Homo erectus. Both Penghu 1 and the Hexian mandible share similar crown size, mandibular prominence, and general robustness. [5] As a result of these similarities and their late presence in Eastern Asia, the authors of "The first Archaic Homo of Taiwan" [1] proposed several models for their existence. The features the mandibles' shared could be explained by either the retention of primitive characteristics of early Asian Homo erectus, a migration of Homo with robust jaws from Africa, inclusion in the species Homo heidelbergensis, or they could have been an adapted form of Homo erectus. [1] However, the species identity or taxonomic relationships lack consensus due to limited material. [1] Co-author Yousuke Kaifu cautioned that additional skeletal parts are needed before species evaluation. [2] In 2015 paleontologist Mark McMenamin argued that unique dental characteristics of the jaw were sufficient to establish a separate species, which he dubbed Homo tsaichangensis. [6] In a 2015 paper, Lelo Suvad accepted the validity of the new species H. tsaichangensis. [7] Chinese anthropologists Xinzhi Wu and Haowen Tong did not agree with the naming of a new species, tentatively assigning the mandible to archaic Homo sapiens, leaving open the possibility of elevating it to a distinct species should more fossils be discovered. [4]
In 2019 Chen Fahu along with a group of co-authors presented a piece suspecting the Penghu 1 mandible to be a member of the hominid group Denisovans. [8] This conclusion has been supported through its comparison with the Denisovan Xiahe mandible. The Xiahe mandible was discovered on the Tibetan Plateau and is dated to be about 160,000 years old. The Xiahe specimen has similar dental morphology compared to Penghu 1. They share 4 distinct characteristics: their M2's are close in mesiodistal width, they both show the agenesis of the M3 molar, they have a similar unique M2 root structure which relates to modern Asian populations, and the P3 displays Tomes' root, which is rarely found in other fossil hominins. [8]
Wu & Bae (2024) assigned Penghu 1 to the new species Homo juluensis, as Xujiayao hominin, Xiahe mandible and Denisovans. [9]
Homo heidelbergensis is an extinct species or subspecies of archaic human which existed from around 600,000 to 300,000 years ago, during the Middle Pleistocene. Homo heidelbergensis was widely considered the most recent common ancestor of modern humans and Neanderthals, but this view has been increasingly disputed since the late 2010s.
Meganthropus is an extinct genus of non-hominin hominid ape, known from the Pleistocene of Indonesia. It is known from a series of large jaw and skull fragments found at the Sangiran site near Surakarta in Central Java, Indonesia, alongside several isolated teeth. The genus has a long and convoluted taxonomic history. The original fossils were ascribed to a new species, Meganthropus palaeojavanicus, and for a long time was considered invalid, with the genus name being used as an informal name for the fossils.
Homo is a genus of great ape that emerged from the genus Australopithecus and encompasses only a single extant species, Homo sapiens, along with a number of extinct species classified as either ancestral or closely related to modern humans; these include Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis. The oldest member of the genus is Homo habilis, with records of just over 2 million years ago. Homo, together with the genus Paranthropus, is probably most closely related to the species Australopithecus africanus within Australopithecus. The closest living relatives of Homo are of the genus Pan, with the ancestors of Pan and Homo estimated to have diverged around 5.7-11 million years ago during the Late Miocene.
Ceprano Man, Argil, and Ceprano Calvarium, is a Middle Pleistocene archaic human fossil, a single skull cap (calvarium), accidentally unearthed in a highway construction project in 1994 near Ceprano in the Province of Frosinone, Italy. It was initially considered Homo cepranensis, Homo erectus, or possibly Homo antecessor; but in recent studies, most regard it either as a form of Homo heidelbergensis sharing affinities with African forms, or an early morph of Neanderthal.
Human taxonomy is the classification of the human species within zoological taxonomy. The systematic genus, Homo, is designed to include both anatomically modern humans and extinct varieties of archaic humans. Current humans have been designated as subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens, differentiated, according to some, from the direct ancestor, Homo sapiens idaltu.
Archaic humans is a broad category denoting all species of the genus Homo that are not Homo sapiens, which are sometimes also called Homo sapiens sapiens, in which case the singular use of sapiens has been applied to some archaic humans as well. Among the earliest modern human remains are those from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, Florisbad in South Africa (259 ka), Omo-Kibish I in southern Ethiopia, and Apidima Cave in Southern Greece. Some examples of archaic humans include H. antecessor (1200–770 ka), H. bodoensis (1200–300 ka), H. heidelbergensis (600–200 ka), Neanderthals, H. rhodesiensis (300–125 ka) and Denisovans.
He County or Hexian is a county in the east of Anhui Province, China, under the jurisdiction of Ma'anshan. It has a population of 650,000 and an area of 1,412 square kilometres (545 sq mi). The government of He County is located in Liyang Town.
Dali man is the remains of a late Homo erectus or archaic Homo sapiens who lived in the late-mid Pleistocene epoch. The remains comprise a complete fossilized skull, which was discovered by Liu Shuntang in 1978 in Dali County, Shaanxi Province, China.
The Denisovans or Denisova hominins are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic human that ranged across Asia during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic, and lived, based on current evidence, from 285 to 25 thousand years ago. Denisovans are known from few physical remains; consequently, most of what is known about them comes from DNA evidence. No formal species name has been established pending more complete fossil material.
The Red Deer Cave people were a prehistoric population of modern humans known from bones dated to between about 17,830 to c. 11,500 years ago, found in Red Deer Cave and Longlin Cave in Yunnan and Guangxi Provinces, in Southwest China.
Xujiayao, located in the Nihewan Basin in China, is an early Late Pleistocene paleoanthropological site famous for its archaic hominin fossils.
The Dmanisi hominins, Dmanisi people, or Dmanisi man were a population of Early Pleistocene hominins whose fossils have been recovered at Dmanisi, Georgia. The fossils and stone tools recovered at Dmanisi range in age from 1.85 to 1.77 million years old, 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. Though their precise classification is controversial and disputed, the Dmanisi fossils are highly significant within research on early hominin migrations out of Africa. The Dmanisi hominins are known from over a hundred postcranial fossils and five famous well-preserved skulls, referred to as Dmanisi Skulls 1–5.
Zhang Dongju is a Chinese archeologist and an associate professor at the College of Earth and Environmental Sciences of Lanzhou University. Zhang's research determined that the Xiahe mandible found in the Baishiya Karst Cave on the Tibetan Plateau shared DNA with fossilized remains found in the Denisova Cave in Siberia. This moved to 120,000 years earlier the dates of earliest proven hominin activities in the Tibetan Plateau, and revealed for the first time that the Denisovan hominins had spread throughout Asia rather than being located only near the Denisova Cave. Zhang's work is considered likely to prompt reconsideration of other fossil remains using ancient protein analysis. Discover, Science News, and Nova all named the discovery to their lists of top science stories of 2019.
Baishiya Karst Cave is a high-altitude paleoanthropological site and a Tibetan Buddhist sanctuary located on the northeastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau in Xiahe County, Gansu, China. This karst cave is the site of the discovery of the earliest hominin fossil found on the Tibetan Plateau, the Xiahe mandible. The mandible, by way of palaeoproteomic analysis, is the first confirmed discovery of a Denisovan fossil outside of Denisova Cave. This fossil discovery shows that archaic hominins were present in a high-altitude, low-oxygen environment by around 160,000 years ago.
The Xiahe mandible is a hominin fossil jaw (mandible) discovered in Baishiya Karst Cave, located on the northeastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau in Xiahe County, Gansu, China. By the use of palaeoproteomic analysis, it is the first confirmed discovery of a Denisovan fossil outside of Denisova Cave, and the most complete confirmed Denisovan fossil. This fossil discovery shows that archaic hominins were present in a high-altitude, low-oxygen environment around 160,000 years ago. Discover, Science News and Nova all named the discovery of the mandible in their lists of Top Science Stories of 2019.
The Penghu Channel or Pescadores Channel is the body of water that separates the Penghu islands from Taiwan island and links the Taiwan Strait to the northeastern South China Sea. The channel has been considered narrow and potentially difficult to navigate in monsoon season. The channel is known for Pleistocene aged fossils dredged up from bottom sediments, including the archaic human mandible Penghu 1 as well as the extinct elephant Palaeoloxodon huaihoensis.
Homo longi is an extinct species of archaic human identified from a nearly complete skull, nicknamed 'Dragon Man', from Harbin on the Northeast China Plain, dating to at minimum 146,000 years ago during the Middle Pleistocene. The skull was discovered in 1933 along the Songhua River while the Dongjiang Bridge was under construction for the Manchukuo National Railway. Due to a tumultuous wartime atmosphere, it was hidden and only brought to paleoanthropologists in 2018. H. longi has been hypothesized to be the same species as the Denisovans, but this cannot be confirmed without genetic testing.
The hominin remains discovered at Sambungmacan are a series of four archaic human fossils assigned to Homo erectus and discovered in Java. The first is the calvarium is Sm 1, the second is a tibial fragment Sm 2, and the third and fourth are calvaria Sm 3 and Sm 4. Laitman and Tattersall (2001) suggested naming Sm 3, the second calvarium in the series, Homo erectus newyorkensis, but later sources do not agree with this taxonomic scheme.
The Hualongdong people are extinct humans that lived in eastern China around 300,000 years ago during the late Middle Pleistocene. Discovered by a research team led by Xiujie Wu and Liu Wu, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, from the Hualong Cave in Dongzhi County at Anhui Province in 2006, they are known from about 30 fossils that belong to 16 individuals. The first analysis of the skull fragments collected in 2006 suggested that they could be members of Homo erectus. For some of the specimens, their exact position as a human species is not known. More complete fossils found in 2015 indicate that they cannot be directly assigned to any Homo species as they also exhibit archaic human features. They are the first humans in Asia to have both archaic and modern human features. They are likely a distinct species that form a separate branch in the human family tree.
Older low-sea-level events, 225, 240–280, ?300, 335–360 and 425–450 ka cannot be completely excluded as the age for Penghu 1, but such a situation requires explanation for preservation through repeated sedimentary events and the unusual distribution of Crocuta crocuta ultima. Therefore, Penghu 1 is younger than 450 ka, and most likely 10–70 ka or 130–190 ka.
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