HUALONGDONG, China, Nov. 25 (UPI) — A group of scientists in eastern China’s Anhui province recently unearthed a fossilized skull belonging to Homo erectus. The well preserved skull was found at the fossil-rich Hualongdong archaeological site.
Researchers have not yet had the chance to precisely date the skull, but believe it is between 150,000 and 412,000 years old.
Since 2006, when researchers first began digging at Hualongdong, the remains of a variety of ancient animal species have been discovered, alongside stone tools, as well as teeth, bones and skull fragments belonging to early hominids.
The newest find is one of the fullest and best preserved skull fossils yet found at the site.
It is quite uncommon to find such a great variety of fossils at a single site,” Liu Wu, a scientist with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in a press release. “It bears great scientific value for the research of human evolution in China and East Asia.”
Hualongdong is quickly becoming one of the most important hominid archaelogical sites in the country, on par with Zhoukoudian, in Beijing, where researchers first uncovered Peking Man, one of the earliest Homo erectus fossils found in China.
