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A fisherman that uses to spend his days on the shore of an island in Taiwan has made a brilliant discovery. A well conserved, decipherable jaw bone has lead scientists to believe that they have found a new species of humans. The report has been made by the Sputnik International that defines the time framing anywhere between 200.000 and 10.000 years ago. This means only three things: Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo floresiensis. Because the human jaw fossil has been discovered in the Penghu River, the person whose jaw has been found is currently named Penghu 1.
Researchers wrote in the journal Nature Communications that Penghu 1 revealed an incredibly late survival.
“Here we describe a newly discovered archaic Homo mandible from Taiwan (Penghu 1), which further increases the diversity of Pleistocene Asian hominins. Penghu 1 revealed an unexpectedly late survival (younger than 450 but most likely 190-10 thousand years ago) of robust, apparently primitive dentognathic morphology in the periphery of the continent, which is unknown among the penecontemporaneous fossil records from other regions of Asia except for the mid-Middle Pleistocene Homo from Hexian, Eastern China”
Scientists have stated that the jaw doesn’t belong to modern humans, but that it might be of a descendant of Homo erectus, which is proved that has lived more than 143.000 years ago. This specific specie has live at about 600 miles away from the place where the jaw has been discovered. However, further research is needed before jumping into conclusions. In order for that to happen, scientists will have to find more bones from this particular body and then decide if they belong to a human ancestor.
Even though Homo sapiens has been the specie with the highest survival rate throughout the world, expert believe that other species of human have lived separately, in the same regions as Homo sapiens did, without them knowing about each other.
Chun-Hsiang Chang of the National Museum of Natural Science in Taichung, Taiwan told the Monitor that the jaw was bought by a collector directly from the fisherman, and the collector’s name is Mr. Jun-Yu Tsai. Mr. Chang knows all kinds of collectors in Taiwan and as soon as he saw the fossil in 2008, he knew that it is an unusual and very important one.
“This is a significant find and we are now sure that a previously unrecognized hominin group was once there, but we need more fossils to know more details about this newly recognized group.”
Image Source: Science Blogs
