Lost Ancestors Found in China?

Hullo, keen analyst! Imagine you’re digging in your backyard and instead of finding an old toy, you find a really old bone that once belonged to a human-like creature. Sounds wild, right? That’s what some super curious people, called palaeontologists, did in China. Let’s dive into this exciting adventure!

A long, long time ago (think when dinosaurs roamed, but slightly after), there were different types of humans who walked this earth, not just the type we are now. Some of these humans left behind clues in the form of fossils (that’s a fancy word for old, hard remains of once-living things).

Backyard Bone Mysteries!

In a place in China called Hualongdong, which is sort of like nature’s treasure chest, they found a special fossil called HLD 6. It’s not a robot name; it’s the name of a super old jawbone and part of a skull. This area in China has been like a lucky dip, giving scientists many old human fossils from the same time.
This HLD 6 fossil is special because it’s like a mix of an old human and us. It has features from different human families – some parts look like our ancient relatives (like the Neanderthals) and some parts look a bit like us. It’s like a puzzle with pieces from different boxes!
Imagine if you had the nose of a cat and the tail of a dog. Weird, right? Well, that’s how this fossil is. The jawbone looks a bit like older human types (it doesn’t even have a chin!). But the skull? The head part looks more like ours.
The scientists put on their detective hats and tried to guess which human family this fossil could belong to. They knew for sure it wasn’t from the Denisovan family (another ancient human type). They think this might be from a whole new family that was sort of a cousin to us.
So, what did we learn from this ancient game of “Guess Who?” We found out that there might have been a human type living a long time ago that was a mix of different humans. They might have been our distant cousins, and they lived in China around 300,000 years ago.
Remember when you mix blue and yellow, and you get green? That’s how evolution works sometimes; you mix some features from one type and some from another and get a brand new kind. And that’s what makes studying our past so exciting and fun!
And next time you dig in your garden, who knows, you might just find an old toy or maybe, just maybe, a clue about our ancient cousins!

Watch a video

Join the journey as the ‘American Museum of Natural History’ YouTube channel unveils a million years of mesmerizing human evolution!

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