Hominoid skull fossil unearthed in Yunnan's Zhaotong may be China's earliest,Yunnan Adventure Travel

Hominoid skull fossil unearthed in Yunnan's Zhaotong may be China's earliest

A hominoid skull fossil, 6 million years ago, was found in Shuitangba Town, Zhantong City, Yunnan on November 4, 2009. It has been confirmed as the earliest skull of a young hominoid on Eurasia since Late Miocene.

Ji Xueping(吉学平), a researcher in the Yunnan Institute of Archaeology, introduced that the skull fossil was unearthed in 2009. "The surface of the skull were basically well-preserved, except for some slight deformation." The skull fossil dated back to 6.2 million to 6.1 million years ago after the paleomagnetic dating method conducted by Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Ji said on a news brief on August 5 that, anthropoids were extincted owing to the climate change in Miocene on other regions of Eurasia. However, anthropoids living in Yunnan survived, which indicated that regions in southwestern China, including Yunnan, could be a refuge for their evolution.

Lu Qingwu(陆庆五), a professor in Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleonthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, said some fossils that might be traced to human being’s origins were unearthed in Africa, but were seldom found in Asia. The fossil dating back to more than 6 million years ago in Asia is of great significance.

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