- The bone was discovered in the Red Deer Cave in Yunnan Province, China
- Skulls found in the cave were thought to belong to early Homo sapiens
- But a thigh bone found with the bones appears to be far more primitive
- It resembles Homo habilis or Homo erectus that died out 70,000 years ago
A mysterious species of early human which resembles those that died out more than 70,000 years ago may have survived living among modern humans until around 14,000 years ago.
Anthropologists have discovered a primitive-looking thigh bone among the remains of a group of enigmatic ‘modern’ humans known as Red Deer Cave people in China.
While skulls found in the cave in Yunnan Province, China, were thought to belong to a primitive form of Homo sapiens, the thigh bone seems to be from a different species of human.
A thigh bone (pictured) discovered in a cave in Yunnan Province alongside the remains of what were thought to be modern humans that lived 14,000 years ago has been found to resemble human species that are far older. It has raised the prospect that early human species may have survived far later than thought
The researchers say the bone matches those from far older species like Homo habilis – which lived between 2.4 and 1.4 million years ago – and Homo erectus, that died out 70,000 years ago.
Like these pre-modern humans, the Maludong femur is very small.
The shaft is narrow, with the outer layer of the shaft, or cortex, is very thin, the walls of the shaft are reinforced in areas of high strain, the femur neck is long.
The place of muscle attachment for the primary flexor muscle of the hip is also very large and faces strongly backwards.
Researchers reconstructed its body mass to be about 110lbs (50 kg), making the the individual very small by pre-modern and Ice Age human hunter-gatherer standards.
Professor Ji Xueping, from the Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology in China, said: ‘Its young age suggests the possibility that primitive-looking humans could have survived until very late in our evolution, but we need to careful as it is just one bone.
‘The unique environment and climate of southwest China resulting from the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau may have provided a refuge for human diversity, perhaps with pre-modern groups surviving very late.’
The discovery is expected to be controversial as modern humans are only thought to have lived alongside the Neanderthals of Europe and East Asia and the Denisovans of southern Siberia.
Even these extinct species are thought to have died out 40,000 years ago shortly after modern humans spread from Africa into the region.
However, unlike these robust and heavy set extinct human species, the thigh bone discovered at Red Deer Cave, also called Maludong, is small and narrow, much like in Homo habilis.
The neck of the femur is long while the area where the muscles were attached to the hop is very large and faces backwards.
The mysterious Red Deer Cave people (illustrated) who lived in China around 14,000 years ago were thought to have been a primitive form of modern human, but the new study suggests they may even have been an archaic species that survived at a time when Homo sapiens were thought to be the only human species alive
The partial femur was found alongside other fossilised remains from Maludong, known as the Red Deer Cave, in China. It is 4 miles (6km) southwest of the city of Mengzi near the North Vietnam border
Skulls found in Red Deer Cave in 1989 (pictured) alongside other bone fragments suggested the people who lived there were a primitive modern human, but some experts have claimed they may be a different species
Researchers behind the analysis of the bone, which is published in the journal Public Library of Science One, believe the person it belonged to would have had a small body mass of just 50kg or less than eight stone, which was light by the standards of Ice Age humans.
The bone was first unearthed along with dozens of other bones and skull fragments in the cave during an excavation in 1989.
Dating has shown they were 14,000 years old.
The remains of a prehistoric deer, which appears to have been cooked, were also found in the cave, giving them their name.
Analysis on the skulls suggested they were a primitive looking population of modern humans who had migrated to the region more than a hundred thousand years ago.
But the latest discovery suggests at least some of the bones, which are know being kept in a museum in south east Yunnan, may belong to an enclave of a much older species.
A skull found at another site in China, Longlin Cave, is also thought to be a hybrid between modern humans and an unknown ancient species.
It could be the people from Red Deer Cave were this other ancient group.
CT-scans of the bone were made using a LightSpeed scanner. Images A through to D show the anterior view of the bone, and scans of the shaft. Images E and F show the trochanter – the area of bone where the femur joins the hip. Images G and H show the medial view
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