Xing Song, Martinón-Torres María, Bermúdez de Castro José María, Zhang Yingqi, Fan Xiaoxiao, Zheng Longting, Huang Wanbo, Liu Wu
Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
National Research Center on Human Evolution (CENIEH), Burgos, Spain.
PLoS One. 2014 Dec 31;9(12):e114265. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0114265. eCollection 2014.
Excavations at the Longtan Cave, Hexian, Anhui Province of Eastern China, have yielded several hominin fossils including crania, mandibular fragments, and teeth currently dated to 412 ± 25 ka. While previous studies have focused on the cranial remains, there are no detailed analyses of the dental evidence. In this study, we provide metric and morphological descriptions and comparisons of ten teeth recovered from Hexian, including microcomputed tomography analyses. Our results indicate that the Hexian teeth are metrically and morphologically primitive and overlap with H. ergaster and East Asian Early and mid-Middle Pleistocene hominins in their large dimensions and occlusal complexities. However, the Hexian teeth differ from H. ergaster in features such as conspicuous vertical grooves on the labial/buccal surfaces of the central incisor and the upper premolar, the crown outline shapes of upper and lower molars and the numbers, shapes, and divergences of the roots. Despite their close geological ages, the Hexian teeth are also more primitive than Zhoukoudian specimens, and resemble Sangiran Early Pleistocene teeth. In addition, no typical Neanderthal features have been identified in the Hexian sample. Our study highlights the metrical and morphological primitive status of the Hexian sample in comparison to contemporaneous or even earlier populations of Asia. Based on this finding, we suggest that the primitive-derived gradients of the Asian hominins cannot be satisfactorily fitted along a chronological sequence, suggesting complex evolutionary scenarios with the coexistence and/or survival of different lineages in Eurasia. Hexian could represent the persistence in time of a H. erectus group that would have retained primitive features that were lost in other Asian populations such as Zhoukoudian or Panxian Dadong. Our study expands the metrical and morphological variations known for the East Asian hominins before the mid-Middle Pleistocene and warns about the possibility that the Asian hominin variability may have been taxonomically oversimplified.
在中国东部安徽省和县龙潭洞进行的发掘工作出土了数件人类化石,包括颅骨、下颌骨碎片和牙齿,目前测定其年代为41.2 ± 2.5万年前。尽管先前的研究主要集中在颅骨化石上,但尚未对牙齿证据进行详细分析。在本研究中,我们对从和县出土的十颗牙齿进行了测量和形态学描述及比较,包括显微计算机断层扫描分析。我们的结果表明,和县牙齿在测量和形态上较为原始,在尺寸和咬合复杂性方面与匠人以及东亚早更新世和中更新世中期人类化石有重叠。然而,和县牙齿与匠人在一些特征上存在差异,比如中切牙和上颌前磨牙唇/颊面明显的垂直沟、上下磨牙的冠轮廓形状以及牙根的数量、形状和分叉情况。尽管地质年代相近,但和县牙齿也比周口店标本更为原始,与桑吉兰早更新世牙齿相似。此外,在和县样本中未发现典型的尼安德特人特征。我们的研究强调了和县样本相较于亚洲同期甚至更早人群在测量和形态上的原始状态。基于这一发现,我们认为亚洲人类从原始到衍生的梯度无法令人满意地按照时间顺序排列,这表明欧亚大陆存在不同谱系共存和/或延续的复杂进化场景。和县可能代表了一个直立人群体在时间上的延续,该群体保留了在周口店或盘县大洞等其他亚洲人群中已消失的原始特征。我们的研究扩展了中更新世中期之前东亚人类已知的测量和形态变异范围,并警示了亚洲人类变异在分类学上可能被过度简化的可能性。
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