Thigh bone adds to mystery over 14,000-year-old Homo species
Leg fossil from Chinese cave raises controversial possibility of hybrid humans
By Bruce Bower
A 14,000-year-old upper leg bone found in southwest China may come from a prehuman line of hominids that survived in East Asia long enough to mate with Homo sapiens, a controversial study concludes.
This partial limb contains an unusual mix of features that link it to various extinct members of the Homo genus, including Homo erectus from more than 1.5 million years ago, say paleoanthropologist Darren Curnoe of the University of New South Wales in Sydney and his colleagues. It’s difficult to assign a species to the Chinese specimen, but the bone doesn’t come from a modern human, the researchers assert December 17 in PLOS ONE.