Scientists announced the discovery of a new species of ancient human, Homo luzonensis.
The remains of the new human species, found in a cave in the Philippines, was first described in 2010, but paleontologists estimated that the fossil represented a diminutive Homo sapien. Researchers weren't sure, however, and so they kept digging. The recovery of additional bones proved the fossil belonged to a unique species.
It's known as Homo luzonensis, after the site of its discovery on the country's largest island Luzon. The small-bodied hominin, lived on the island of Luzon at least 50,000 to 67,000 years ago. The hominin—identified from a total of seven teeth and six small bones—hosts a patchwork of ancient and more advanced features.
A distinctive mix of features on these five fossil teeth from the same individual, unearthed in the Philippines, helped researchers determine that they had found a new hominid species. - Callao Cave Archaeology Project
As luck would have it, excavations uncovered two toe bones along with seven teeth, two finger bones, and part of a femur on return trips to Callao Cave in 2011 and 2015. In all, the remains represent at least three individuals.
The small fossils' curves and grooves reveal an unexpected mixture of those found in very ancient human ancestors and in more recent people.In shape and size, some of the fossils match those of corresponding bones from other Homo species. “But if you take the whole combination of features for H. luzonensis, no other Homo species is similar,” says study coauthor and paleoanthropologist Florent Détroit of the French National Museum of Natural History in Paris.
The teeth's small sizes and relatively simple shapes, for instance, point to a more “modern” individual, but one upper premolar has three roots—a trait found in fewer than 3 percent of modern humans. And one foot bone resembles those of the ancient australopithecines, a group that includes the famous human relative Lucy, who trekked across Africa roughly three million years ago.
The finger and toe bones are curved, suggesting climbing was still an important activity for this species
Before Neanderthals or Homo sapiens ever left Africa and spread across Europe and Eurasia, earlier hominins left Africa and made their way across Eurasia, beginning unique experiments in human evolution.
Among the fossils unearthed in the Philippine cave were several teeth, a thigh bone, and a few hand and foot bones. Image credit France's National Museum of Natural History
The discovery of the "Hobbit" fossil, representing the hominin species Homo floresiensis, on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2004, proved some of these experiments made their way to the isolated laboratories of Southeast Asian islands.
The find shows that human evolution in the region may have been a highly complicated affair, with three or more human species in the region at around the time our ancestors arrive.
“It’s absolutely one of the most important findings that [will] be out in a number of years,” said Aida Gómez-Robles, a paleoanthropologist at University College London who reviewed the study before publication.