Yet Another New Kind of Human?

The full story has yet to be told - that's for sure!  Darwin, I hope you're spinning in your grave!

The BBC article is posted in full below (not including photographs), but the full press release [excerpted below] from the University of New South Wales (Australia) can be found here.  It contains somewhat different information than the BBC article that gives more of a flavor for just what exciting knowledge the study of these bones (found in 1979 and 1989) may yield. 

Mystery human fossils put spotlight on China

Youngest of their kind ever found in mainland East Asia

		IMAGE:An artist's reconstruction of fossils from two caves in southwest China have revealed a previously unknown Stone Age people and give a rare glimpse of a recent stage of human... Click here for more information.

Fossils from two caves in south-west China have revealed a previously unknown Stone Age people and give a rare glimpse of a recent stage of human evolution with startling implications for the early peopling of Asia.

The fossils are of a people with a highly unusual mix of archaic and modern anatomical features and are the youngest of their kind ever found in mainland East Asia.

Dated to just 14,500 to 11,500 years old, these people would have shared the landscape with modern-looking people at a time when China's earliest farming cultures were beginning, says an international team of scientists led by Associate Professor Darren Curnoe, of the University of New South Wales, and Professor Ji Xueping of the Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archeology.
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Whoever these people were, the youngest of their bones are dated to around the end of the last Ice Age.  What a shockeroo this is!  I believe I can already feel it reverberating around the world of the scientific elite.  Oh my! 

Soooo, let's see, over the past few years while I've been writing this bloe there has been and continues to be a "fresh look" at the former "Ape-Man" Neanderthal whose DNA survives in millions of humans alive today; there are the "mysterious" Denisovans in Siberia, whose DNA also continues to exist in millions of humans alive today; and now, the "Red Deer People" in Southwest China (not to mention the "Hobbits" -- Homo floresiensis  -- that experts will be talking about for the next 50 years...).  If the researchers are successful in extracting DNA from these young bones, what more secrets to the herstory of womankind may be revealed?

So you tell me, darlings?  What, precisely, does the word "extinct" mean???  If our experts in the field of "evolution" haven't even yet settled upon a definition for what a "modern human" (homo sapiens sapiens) is, who on earth are they to tell ME that so and so was descended from so and so, and THIS is the way it was, and shut the flying F up if you don't agree because we;re the experts and you're not!  Oooooh, it just tickles me pink how many people must be gagging on their past and present words tonight.  Here's a wicked laugh just for you:  BWWWWWWWWWAAAAHHHHAAAAAHHHHHAAAAA!


From BBC News
14 March 2012 Last updated at 11:19 ET
By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

Human fossils hint at new species

The remains of what may be a previously unknown human species have been identified in southern China.

The bones, which represent at least five individuals, have been dated to between 11,500 and 14,500 years ago.

But scientists are calling them simply the Red Deer Cave people, after one of the sites where they were unearthed.

The team has told the PLoS One journal that far more detailed analysis of the fossils is required before they can be ascribed to a new human lineage.

"We're trying to be very careful at this stage about definitely classifying them," said study co-leader Darren Curnoe from the University of New South Wales, Australia.

"One of the reasons for that is that in the science of human evolution or palaeoanthropology, we presently don't have a generally agreed, biological definition for our own species (Homo sapiens), believe it or not. And so this is a highly contentious area," he told BBC News.

Much of the material has been in Chinese collections for some time but has only recently been subjected to intense investigation.

The remains of some of the individuals come from Maludong (or Red Deer Cave), near the city of Mengzi in Yunnan Province. A further skeleton was discovered at Longlin, in neighbouring Guangxi Province.

The skulls and teeth from the two locations are very similar to each other, suggesting they are from the same population.

But their features are quite distinct from what you might call a fully modern human, says the team. Instead, the Red Deer Cave people have a mix of archaic and modern characteristics.

In general, the individuals had rounded brain cases with prominent brow ridges. Their skull bones were quite thick. Their faces were quite short and flat and tucked under the brain, and they had broad noses.

Their jaws jutted forward but they lacked a modern-human-like chin. Computed Tomography (X-ray) scans of their brain cavities indicate they had modern-looking frontal lobes but quite archaic-looking anterior, or parietal, lobes. They also had large molar teeth.

Dr Curnoe and colleagues put forward two possible scenarios in their PLoS One paper for the origin of the Red Deer Cave population.

One posits that they represent a very early migration of a primitive-looking Homo sapiens that lived separately from other forms in Asia before dying out.
Another possibility contends that they were indeed a distinct Homo species that evolved in Asia and lived alongside our own kind until remarkably recently.

A third scenario being suggested by scientists not connected with the research is that the Red Deer Cave people could be hybrids.

"It's possible these were modern humans who inter-mixed or bred with archaic humans that were around at the time," explained Dr Isabelle De Groote, a palaeoanthropologist from London's Natural History Museum.

"The other option is that they evolved these more primitive features independently because of genetic drift or isolation, or in a response to an environmental pressure such as climate."

Dr Curnoe agreed all this was "certainly possible".

Attempts are being made to extract DNA from the remains. This could yield information about interbreeding, just as genetic studies have on the closely related human species - the Neanderthals and an enigmatic group of people from Siberia known as the Denisovans.

Whatever their true place in the Homo family tree, the Red Deer People are an important find simply because of the dearth of well dated, well described specimens from this part of the world.

And their unearthing all adds to the fascinating and increasingly complex story of human migration and development.

"The Red Deer People were living at what was a really interesting time in China, during what we call the epipalaeolithic or the end of the Stone Age," says Dr Curnoe.

"Not far from Longlin, there are quite well known archaeological sites where some of the very earliest evidence for the epipalaeolithic in East Asia has been found.

"These were occupied by very modern looking people who are already starting to make ceramics - pottery - to store food. And they're already harvesting from the landscape wild rice. There was an economic transition going on from full-blown foraging and gathering towards agriculture."

Quite how the Red Deer People fit into this picture is unclear. The research team is promising to report further investigations into some of the stone tools and cultural artefacts discovered at the dig sites.

The co-leader on the project is Professor Ji Xueping of the Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology.