‘RED DEER CAVE’ PEOPLE MAY BE NEW HUMAN SPECIES
Fossils of what could be a previously unknown type of human have been found in caves in southern China.
A rendering of how a “Red Cave Deer” person may have looked (Photo: BBC)
According to Darren Curnoe, a palaeoanthropologist at the University of New South Wales in Australia, “These new fossils might be of a previously unknown species, one that survived until the very end of the ice age around 11,000 years ago…Alternatively, they might represent a very early and previously unknown migration of modern humans out of Africa, a population who may not have contributed genetically to living people.”
According to Charles Choi of LiveScience:
The Stone Age fossils are unusual mosaics of modern and archaic human anatomical features, as well as previously unseen characteristics. This makes them difficult to classify as either a new species or an unusual type of modern human.
For instance, the Red Deer Cave people had long, broad and tall frontal lobes like modern humans. These brain lobes are located immediately behind the forehead, and are linked with personality and behavior.
However, the Red Deer Cave people differ from modern Homo sapiens in their prominent brow ridges, thick skull bones, flat upper faces with a broad nose, jutting jaws that lack a humanlike chin, brains moderate in size by ice age human standards, large molar teeth, and primitively short parietal lobes — brain lobes at the top of the head associated with sensory data. ‘These are primitive features seen in our ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago,’ Curnoe said.
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