News Anthropology

An ancient Chinese skull might change how we see our human roots

Reconstruction of a damaged 1-million-year-old skull suggests a surprising link to H. sapiens

Three skulls sit on a table. One fossil on the left is largely crushed. One on the right is slightly deformed. In the center, a gray reconstruction depicts what the one on the right would have originally looked like.

A digitally repaired, roughly 1-million-year-old Chinese skull has contributed to a new framework for human evolution. A replica of the reconstructed skull, center, sits between its original fossil version, right, and a second, more extensively crushed Homo skull from the same Chinese site.

Guanghui Zhao

By Bruce Bower

A roughly 1-million-year-old Chinese hominid skull has long vexed efforts to nail down its evolutionary identity.