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Yunxian 2 skull may be a 1-million-year-old relative of Homo sapiens

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Five New Discoveries Rewriting Human History
Source: Five New Discoveries Rewriting Human History by Curious Being

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📍 Hanjang River Terrace

China’s 1-million-year-old Yunxian 2 skull may belong to an early lineage close to Homo sapiens 💀

The crushed cranium, excavated in Hubei in 1990, was rebuilt using CT scans, virtual modelling and 3D printing. The September 2025 Science study places Yunxian 2 near the ancestry of Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo longi—not as a confirmed Homo sapiens or Homo longi fossil.

Key facts:

- Found on the Hanjiang River terrace in Hubei

- Approximately 1 million years old

- Earlier reports assigned it to Homo erectus or Homo sp.

- New analysis places it near the ancestry of several archaic-human lineages

- The findings push the inferred divergence earlier, but do not directly prove long coexistence

- Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum was a co-author; his suggestion that older Homo sapiens fossils may exist remains a hypothesis

Key facts

  • A Science study published in September 2025 reconstructed the roughly 1-million-year-old Yunxian 2 cranium.
  • Yunxian 2 was excavated in Hubei in 1990 from the Hanjiang River terrace.
  • Earlier reports treated the fossil as Homo erectus or Homo sp.; the new analysis places it near the ancestry of the group containing Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo longi, rather than identifying it as H. sapiens or H. longi.
  • CT scanning, virtual modelling and 3D printing were used to reconstruct the crushed cranium.
  • The result supports an earlier divergence of modern-human and other archaic-human lineages; it does not directly demonstrate a million-year coexistence of anatomically modern H. sapiens with Neanderthals or H. longi.
  • Chris Stringer of London's Natural History Museum co-authored the study. His suggestion that million-year-old Homo sapiens fossils may remain undiscovered is a hypothesis.

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Sources

history.com
Linked in video description
nature.com
Linked in video description
1 million-year-old Yunxian skull redefines human evolution ...archaeologymag.com
Digital reconstruction of the Yunxian 2 skull reshapes human evolution timelines in Asia and Denisovan origins.
Million-year-old Skull from Central China Rewrites Human ...english.cas.cn
A new study of a 1-million-year-old human skull found in central China revealed a previously unknown branch of the human family tree, ...
Ancient skull from China may shake up timeline of human ...reuters.com
Sept 25 (Reuters) - In 1990, an ancient human skull was unearthed in China's Hubei Province that was so badly deformed during fossilization ...
The phylogenetic position of the Yunxian cranium ...science.org
by X Feng · 2025 · Cited by 39 — In this study, we restored and reconstructed the distorted Yunxian 2 cranium using recently introduced technology. The results show that this ...
The phylogenetic position of the Yunxian cranium ...pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
by X Feng · 2025 · Cited by 39 — In this study, we restored and reconstructed the distorted Yunxian 2 cranium using recently introduced technology. The results show that this ...
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