Human remains from the Pleistocene-Holocene transition of southwest China suggest a complex evolutionary history for East Asians.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Later Pleistocene human evolution in East Asia remains poorly understood owing to a scarcity of well described, reliably classified and accurately dated fossils. Southwest China has been identified from genetic research as a hotspot of human diversity, containing ancient mtDNA and Y-DNA lineages, and has yielded a number of human remains thought to derive from Pleistocene deposits. We have prepared, reconstructed, described and dated a new partial skull from a consolidated sediment block collected in 1979 from the site of Longlin Cave (Guangxi Province). We also undertook new excavations at Maludong (Yunnan Province) to clarify the stratigraphy and dating of a large sample of mostly undescribed human remains from the site.

Methodology/principal findings

We underto

SUBMITTER: Curnoe D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3303470 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature