Saturday Science: Another Cousin

Scientists think they have found yet another pre-modern human species, dubbed the Red Cave People, in southwest China:

A 14,000-year-old thigh bone suggests a mysterious prehistoric humanoid species may have lived alongside humans in southwest China.

The partial femur was discovered in Maludong, or Red Deer Cave, in 1989, but researchers recently published their analysis of the finding in the journal PLoS One, reported Sci-News.com.

The thigh bone is small like the primitive species Homo habilis, with a narrow shaft, and thin outer layer, but the walls of the shaft are reinforced in high-stress areas and the primary flexor muscle is very large and faces backwards, researchers said.

The Maludong humanoid likely weighed about 110 pounds, which is considered very small by pre-modern and Ice Age human standards.

We like to think in nice, tidy compartments -- in this case, a clear line of human descent with one or two offshoots -- say, Neanderthals -- and that's it. But it's not: there were more offshoots running around than we perhaps know about, especially once you get out of Africa, where it all started. And it's worth stressing that this find is really late: 14,000 years old, by which time modern humans had already invited themselves into the Americas.

And this particular portion of Asia -- southwest China, the northeastern part of the Indian subcontinent, the north part of the peninsula commonly known as "Southeast Asia" -- is made for migrants.

If you notice, Yunnan, which is where this find occurred, sits nicely on the edge of a likely migration route, south of the eastern edge of the Himalayas and near a number of major waterways.

Here's the source article from Sci-News.com, with more detail.

(Top image:   Artist’s reconstruction of a Red Deer Cave man. Image credit: Peter Schouten.)