Million-year-old skull rewrites human evolution, scientists claim
New analysis of Yunxian 2 suggests Homo sapiens emerged earlier and coexisted with Neanderthals longer than previously thought
Scientists have identified a million-year-old skull from central China that, if confirmed, would push back the emergence of Homo sapiens by roughly half a million years and suggest long overlap with Neanderthals and a sister group, Homo longi. The Yunxian 2 skull, recovered from Hubei province by a team including researchers from Fudan University and the Natural History Museum in London, was reinterpreted in a study published in Science. The authors contend the specimen is not Homo erectus, as previously thought, but an early form of Homo longi—one of several lineages that were coexisting with our own and with Neanderthals as early as a million years ago. The finding, if verified, would rewrite a central chapter of human evolution and challenge long-held timelines.
To reach their conclusion, the researchers compared Yunxian 2 with numerous fossil skulls and used two independent lines of evidence: cranial-shape analysis and genetic data extrapolated from ancient DNA patterns. They also reconstructed the damaged fossils with computer modeling and produced 3D-printed replicas to study their features more clearly. "From the very beginning, when we got the result, we thought it was unbelievable," said Xijun Ni of Fudan University, who co-led the work. "But we tested it again and again... and we are now confident." The team notes that previous assessments had misclassified Yunxian 2 as Homo erectus because the original skulls were crushed, obscuring their true form. The work has undergone independent review.
Even with this new interpretation, several aspects remain debated. Prof Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum, who co-led the study, notes that the earliest solid evidence for Homo sapiens in Africa dates to about 300,000 years ago, and there are million-year-old fossils in Africa and Europe that still need to be reconciled into the timeline. "There is likely to be million-year-old fossils of Homo sapiens somewhere on our planet—we just haven't found them yet," Stringer said.
The new timeline implies that Homo longi, Neanderthals and Homo sapiens may have coexisted for roughly 800,000 years, a span long enough for potential interactions and interbreeding. Proponents say the revision helps explain a batch of old fossils that have resisted clean classification for decades, sometimes called the 'muddle in the middle.' Ni describes human evolution as a tree with several closely related branches that may have interbred and persisted side by side for nearly a million years. "So this is an unbelievable result," he added.
The Yunxian 2 skull was found alongside two other remains in Hubei Province, but all were damaged and crushed, complicating early assessments. Ni's team scanned and digitally reconstructed the fossils, then printed replicas to study their form more accurately, a step they say was crucial to reclassifying Yunxian 2 as a separate, more advanced group of humans.
The study's conclusions, published in Science, have sparked debate among paleontologists. Some researchers consider the results plausible but far from certain and note that further evidence—particularly genetic data from ancient populations—will be needed to confirm the revised timeline. Others caution that timing estimates in both fossil-based and genetic analyses remain challenging, and that additional well-preserved finds from Africa and Europe will be essential to test the new model.
If validated by subsequent work, the discovery could push back the earliest emergence of Homo sapiens by hundreds of thousands of years and reshape how scientists classify thousands of fragmentary fossils scattered across the globe. It would also reinforce the view that early humans, long before modern anatomy fully appeared, existed in multiple regions and interacted with related lineages over extended periods.
The next steps in testing the new timeline will likely involve additional fossil finds and, where possible, genetic analyses from ancient samples. While the claim upends conventional wisdom in some respects, experts say it underscores how much remains unknown about the deep past and the messy, branching origins of our species.
