Recent studies of an increasing number of hominin fossils highlight regional and chronological diversities of archaic Homo
in the Pleistocene of eastern Asia. However, such a realization is
still based on limited geographical occurrences mainly from Indonesia,
China and Russian Altai. Here we describe a newly discovered archaic Homo
mandible from Taiwan (Penghu 1), which further increases the diversity
of Pleistocene Asian hominins. Penghu 1 revealed an unexpectedly late
survival (younger than 450 but most likely 190–10 thousand years ago) of
robust, apparently primitive dentognathic morphology in the periphery
of the continent, which is unknown among the penecontemporaneous fossil
records from other regions of Asia except for the mid-Middle Pleistocene
Homo from Hexian, Eastern China. Such patterns of geographic
trait distribution cannot be simply explained by clinal geographic
variation of Homo erectus between northern China and Java, and
suggests survival of multiple evolutionary lineages among archaic
hominins before the arrival of modern humans in the region.
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