New discovery of Late Pleistocene modern human teeth from Chongzuo, Guangxi, southern China

Abstract

An increasing number of multidisciplinary field and laboratory projects focused on paleoanthropological sites from different areas of Asia are resulting in the discovery of many important findings. One such key area is southern China, particularly in the karst limestone caves of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, as a number of important hominin fossils have been discovered in recent years. In order to more intensively investigate the vast karst deposits of southern Guangxi, beginning in 2016 we initiated a systematic survey and excavation research program in Chongzuo City, southwest Guangxi. To date, this new field research initiative resulted in the discovery of eight new vertebrate fossil localities. One of these sites is the Yanlidong (“YLD”) cave, which in addition to yielding a rich collection of vertebrate fossils, also included the discovery of three hominin fossil teeth. Based on morphological and metric comparisons, we tentatively assigned these three teeth to modern Homo sapiens. Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of fossiliferous sediment indicate that age of these human teeth can be constrained between 30 and 65 ka. The implications of this new evidence from YLD and other nearby caves for the origin of modern humans in eastern Asia debate are discussed.