Dali (fossil)

As Dali - man (Chinese大荔 人, Dàlìrén Pinyin, English Dali Man, Homo sapiens daliensis ') refers to a 1978 county of Dali prefecture-level city in Weinan Shaanxi Province of China discovered, well-preserved fossil skull of a male teenager.

The Dali - man comes from a period between the Peking Man and the Dingcun people and plays a key role in the mainly represented by Chinese researchers theory that modern humans have developed not only in Africa from Homo erectus ( "Out - of-Africa theory "), but simultaneously in several parts of the world ( " multi- regional origin of modern humans ").

Locality and conservation

The skull was discovered in 1978 in the western part of Dali near the village Jiefang in an existing fine-pebble gravel layer of the lower part of the third terrace of the River Luo He ( Luo Hé ). The site of the Dali people who Tianshuigou - site (甜 水沟 遗址Tianshuigou Yizhi, . Engl T'ien -shui- kou site), since 2006 is on the list of monuments of the People's Republic of China. The Fund itself is kept in the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and is not accessible to the public.

The skull is - almost intact - in contrast to many other finds of Hominini in China; However, it lacks the lower jaw. The intersection with younger layers of the skull is slightly crushed, the upper jaw and the roof of the mouth are slightly shifted. A greater part of the right parietal bone is missing, as are the upper jaw teeth, and the left zygoma. Along with the skull ox teeth and some stone tools were recovered, mainly scrapers.

Features

The skull has, according to the first description features of Homo erectus, in particular a Schädelwulst and the comparatively strong browridges. Other features are similar to those of modern humans (Homo sapiens), so the face with the little protruding cheekbones and flat nasal bones. The cranial capacity is slightly smaller than that of Homo sapiens with a volume from 1100 to 1200 cc, but corresponds to the known from Europe finds of late Homo heidelbergensis. The anatomy of the skull and the shape of the cranial vault differ from early European Hominini - finds such as those from Petralona and Atapuerca as of Neanderthal skulls.

From its Chinese agents, the fossil was due to the modern features interpreted as archaic Homo sapiens. His age was 260,000 years to 300,000 bis dated by means of thorium dating to the tooth of a wool rhino, which was found in the same layer as the context of the skull - the late Middle Pleistocene; 1994 had resulted in an age of 209,000 ± 23,000 years, the uranium - lead dating of a bovine tooth. The skull would thus be about the same age as the European Homo steinheimensis, which also has a similar cranial capacity. The paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer pointed out in 2012, the fossil could potentially belong to the Denisova people.