Dali Man
Homo sapiens | |
Age | 260±20 ka |
---|---|
Place discovered | Dali County, Shaanxi, China |
Date discovered | 1978 |
Discovered by | Liu Shuntang |
Dali man (
Dating the skull is a matter of debate. While
Access to Dali Man is restricted. The cranium is currently housed in the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, China.[2]
Characteristics of the skull
The Dali cranium is interesting to modern anthropologists as it is possibly a well-preserved example of archaic Homo sapiens; it has a mixture of traits from
Vault
The skull is low and long, though the posterior end of the skull is rounded, unlike the contemporary broad-based H. erectus or top-wide skull of modern humans. It does however bear a prominent sagittal keel, a trait found in H. erectus but in few modern humans. The brain appears to have been sitting mainly behind the face, giving an extremely low forehead. The cranial capacity is estimated to around 1 120 cc, at the lower end of the modern human range, and upper end of the H. erectus range. The base of the cranium is less robust than in H. erectus.[7] The posterior margin lacks the heavy neck muscle attachment seen in that group. Unlike the distinct tubular form seen in H. erectus, the tympanic plate is thin and foreshortened, a condition similar to that of modern humans.[8]
Unlike H. erectus skulls, the Dali skull lacks the "pinched" look between the face and the cranial vault.
Face
The face is topped by massive brow ridges. The ridges curve over each eye, unlike the straight bar-like ridges seen at the
Taxonomy
Recent human family tree |
According to Ni et al. 2021 Denisovans are most closely related to Neanderthals according to nDNA and ancient protein analyses by Chen et al. 2019.[10] )
|
In March 1978, a surprisingly complete
The 2010 sequencing of the genetic code of an unidentified human species from Denisova Cave, Siberia, propagated suppositions that the Dali Man and East Asian contemporaries represent these enigmatic "Denisovans", but this is impossible to confirm as Denisovans are only identifiable from DNA instead of any diagnostic anatomical features.[13]
At around this time, the nomen Homo heidelbergensis was regaining popularity, being largely assigned to various Middle Pleistocene African and European specimens.[13] Some authors additionally lumped contemporary East Asian remains into it, including Dali, first suggested by anthropologists Aurélien Mounier, Silvana Condemi, and Giorgio Manzi in 2011.[14] In 2016, Manzi recommended resurrecting Wu's nomen as "H. heidelbergensis daliensis" for Middle Pleistocene East Asian specimens.[12] However according to a 2023 assessment, since Wu wrote only that "it is suggested that Dali cranium probably represents a new subspecies" (p. 538, italics added for emphasis) the name daliensis was never validly published according to International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) rules, being proposed conditionally and published after 1960 (and not formally proposed by subsequent workers in the intervening period), and is therefore unavailable;[15] thus if its use were desired, for example to designate a separate taxon from H. longi (see below) under the scenario that the Harbin and Dali specimens came from different species or subspecies, the name would have to be republished under acceptable nomenclatural rules, or a different name proposed.
In 2021, Chinese paleoanthropologist Qiang Ji and colleagues erected a new species, Homo longi, based on a late Middle Pleistocene skull from Harbin in northeastern China. They suggested Denisovans may belong to H. longi, but excluded Dali Man and contemporaneous East Asian specimens. They instead recommended reviving H. daliensis to accommodate these specimens.[16] In a study published the same day, Israeli anthropologist Israel Hershkovitz and colleagues suggested the apparent diversity of supposedly unique forms during the Middle Pleistocene is the result of a complex network of cross-continental interbreeding, based on the 140 to 120 thousand years old Israeli Nesher Ramla remains which feature a mix of Neanderthal and H. erectus traits.[17]
Other possible Dali-type finds
An assortment of primitive Homo skulls have tentatively been placed with the Dali find. The Maba Man, a 120 to 140 000 year old fragmentary skull from Guangdong in China shows the same general contours of the forehead.[18] A partial female skeleton with skull from Jinniushan (also China) seems to belong to the same group, characterized by a very robust skull cap but less robust skull base.[19][20][21] A possibly fourth member could be the Narmada skull from the Madhya Pradesh in India, consisting of a single robust cranial vault.[22]
The
See also
- List of human evolution fossils
- Dragon Man (archaic human)
References
- S2CID 4311322. Uranium series dating of ox teeth from the site obtained a date of 209±23 ka.
- ^ a b P. Brown Dali archaic Homo sapiens University of New England, Australia (2002)
- "correlating the pIRIR290 ages between 267.7 ± 13.9 ka and 258.3 ± 14.2 ka and new pollen analysis, we proposed a new viewpoint that the Dali Man was likely to live during a transitional period from glacial to interglacial climate in the S2/L3 (MIS 7/8) stage."
- .
- ^ PMID 6789450.
- ^ Wu, X (1988). "Comparative study of early Homo sapiens from China and Europe". Acta Anthropologica Sinica. 7: 292–299.
- ^ a b Wu R. (1988): The reconstruction of the fossil human skull from Jinniushan, Yinkou, Liaoning Province and its main features. Acta Anthropologica Sinica no 7: pp 97–101.
- ^ Etler, D.A. (2001). Picture Gallery of Fossil Hominoids and Hominids from China Archived 2011-07-08 at archive.today, from the Center for Study of Chinese Prehistory.
- ^ S2CID 236784246.
- S2CID 141503768.
- ISBN 978-0226738604.
- ^ .
- ^ S2CID 205826399.
- PMID 21533096.
- PMID 38028133.
- PMID 34557772.
- S2CID 235628111.
- ^ Maba skull Archived 2016-05-27 at the Wayback Machine, Australian museum
- ^ Lu, Z. (1989): Date of Jinniushan man and his position in human evolution. Liaohai Wenwu Xuekan no 1, pp 44-55
- ^ Wu, R-K (1988): The reconstruction of the fossil human skull from Jinniushan, Yinkou, Liaoning Province and its main features. Acta Anthropologica Sinica No 7, pp 97-101
- ^ Brown, P.: Jinniushan skull Archived 2012-02-10 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Cameron, D., Patnaik, R. & Sahni, A. (2004): The phylogenetic significance of the Middle Pleistocene Narmada hominin cranium from central India. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, vol. 14, Issue 6, pp 419-447 summary Archived 2012-04-06 at the Wayback Machine
- PMID 21179161.
- .
- PMID 21944045.
- ^ M. J. Hubisz et al. (2020). Mapping gene flow between ancient hominins through demography-aware inference of the ancestral recombination graph. PLoS Genet 16 (8): e1008895; doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1008895, see also:
- Denisovans Interbred with Mysterious Archaic Hominin: Study. On: sci-news. Aug 7, 2020