María Martinón-Torres and José María Bermúdez de Castro form the Denta Anthropology Group of the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH) have just published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, jointly with scientists from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Palaeoanthropology in Beijing, a study of human dental fossils found in Xujiayao, a site in Northern China, which evidences that during the Upper Pleistocene the great Asian continent could be inhabited by an unknown species still uncatalogued.

It is generally accepted that from the late Middle to the early Late Pleistocene (∼340–90 ka BP), Neanderthals were occupying Europe and Western Asia, whereas anatomically modern humans were present in the African continent. In contrast, the paucity of hominin fossil evidence from East Asia from this period impedes a complete evolutionary picture of the genus Homo, as well as assessment of the possible contribution of or interaction with Asian hominins in the evolution of Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis. Here we present a comparative study of a hominin dental sample recovered from the Xujiayao site, in Northern China, attributed to the early Late Pleistocene (MIS 5 to 4).

Our dental study reveals a mosaic of primitive and derived dental features for the Xujiayao hominins that can be summarized as follows: i) they are different from archaic and recent modern humans, ii) they present some features that are common but not exclusive to the Neanderthal lineage, and iii) they retain some primitive conformations classically found in East Asian Early and Middle Pleistocene hominins despite their young geological age.

Thus, our study evinces the existence in China of a population of unclear taxonomic status with regard to other contemporary populations such as H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis. The morphological and metric studies of the Xujiayao teeth expand the variability known for early Late Pleistocene hominin fossils and suggest the possibility that a primitive hominin lineage may have survived late into the Late Pleistocene in China

“Our work highlights the great variability of human populations in Asia during the Pleistocene and advises of the need to review the taxonomy of many of the fossils found in this continent", "says Maria Martinon-Torres.