The group of human species includes Neanderthals, ourselves and, scientists say, a unusual sort of oddball named Homo luzonensis.
By Ben Guarino Ben Guarino Reporter covering the practice and culture of science Email Bio Follow April 10 at 1:00 PM Please welcome a possible new member to our band of upright apes: Homo luzonensis, whose teeth and bones were discovered in an island cave. The remains represent a new species, scientists concluded in a report published Wednesday in the journal Nature. They named it after Luzon, the island in the Philippines where the remains were found.
“The evolution of our evolutionary group, Homo, is getting weirder and weirder,” said paleoanthropologist Rick Potts, who directs the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program and was not involved with this research. Like Homo naledi, these fossils show a jumble of old and new traits, Potts said. Their particular combination suggests these humans were “unknown previously to science.”
Mijares returned to Callao Cave and uncovered more remains in 2011 and 2015. All told, the scientists pulled a dozen fossilized parts from the cave — teeth, a thigh bone, finger bones and foot bones, representing three individuals. Attempts to extract DNA from the remains were unsuccessful. New York University anthropologist Susan Anton, an expert on Homo erectus, was skeptical the remains came from a new species. The study authors “don’t have any heads,” said Anton, who described herself as “somewhat conservative and somewhat of a lumper.” Skulls, rich in anthropological detail, would be more convincing, she said.
A few “mammal species you find on Luzon appear to have come from the mainland,” Piper said. The Asian continent is 400 or more miles away through the Luzon strait. But in the Middle Pleistocene, when glacial sheets locked up vast amounts of water, sea levels dropped by as much as 400 feet, Piper said.
The cartoon version of evolution, in which a hunched ape becomes a tall and jaunty biped, suggests a journey with a destination. The reality is messier, particularly when species adapt to islands.
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