Puzzling fossils unearthed in China may rewrite the human story

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. However, while it is plausible the remains studied by Bae and Wu may represent a previously unrecognized type of ancient human, Ni said in his view the coauthors hadn’t yet put forward enough information to officially classify Homo juluensis as a newly discovered species — a process that involves lengthy analysis and is often contested. Mongle of Stony Brook University said while she agreed multiple species of ancient human may have existed in Asia, she also thought the fossils Bae identified as belonging to the “big heads” look similar to the Homo longi skull. “I theoretically support the idea of multiple hominin lineages in the Asian Pleistocene, I’m not totally convinced how different these fossils are from the recently named Homo longi fossils,” she said. “This is good on one hand because it gives the field time to discover more evidence for the Denisovans in fossil form before naming a new species, but is bad on the other hand because it leaves those important fossils ‘up for grabs’ for people to assign them a taxonomic name prematurely.” There is hope among some paleoanthropologists that when Denisovans are given a formal species name “it will reflect the type site of Denisova Cave and the now ubiquitous colloquial name ‘Denisovans,’” McRae said, conceding there is “no guarantee that will happen.” The time period is full of fossil hominins that morphologically are “a bit of a mess,” he added.