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The Homo sapiens Cave hominin site of Mulan Mountain, Jiangzhou District, Chongzuo, Guangxi with emphasis on its age

  • Articles/Geology
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Chinese Science Bulletin

Abstract

One of the most hotly debated and frontal issues in paleoanthropology focuses on the origins of modern humans. Recently, an incomplete hominin mandible with a distinctly weaker mental protuberance than modern human and a great variety of coexisting fossil mammals were unearthed from the Homo sapiens Cave of Mulan Mountain, Chongzuo, Guangxi. The mammalian fauna from the Homo sapiens Cave characterized by the combination of Elephas kiangnanensis, first occurring Elephas maixmus, and Megatapirus augustus, and strikingly different from the Early Pleistocene Gigantopithecus fauna and the Middle Pleistocene Ailuropoda-Stogodon fauna of South China could be regarded as an early representive of the typical Asian elephant fauna. Faunal analysis, biostratigraphic correlation, and, most importantly, U-series dating all consistently support an estimate of ca. 110 ka for the age of the fossil Homo sapiens and coexisting mammalian fauna, that is, the early Late Pleistocene. The fauna is mainly made up of tropical-subtropical elements, but grassland elements have a much greater variety than forest elements, which probably indicates a drier climate at that time. This discovery of early Homo sapiens at the Mulan Mountain will play a significant role in the study of the origin and its environmental background of modern humans.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Evolutionary Systematics of Vertebrates, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100044, China

    ChangZhu Jin, YingQi Zhang, QinQi Xu, ZhiLu Tang, Yuan Wang & JinYi Liu

  2. School of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    WenShi Pan & DaGong Qin

  3. Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an, 710075, China

    YanJun Cai

  4. Natural History Museum of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Nanning, 530012, China

    Wei Wang

  5. Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA

    R. Lawrence Edwards & Hai Cheng

Authors
  1. ChangZhu Jin
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  2. WenShi Pan
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  3. YingQi Zhang
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  4. YanJun Cai
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  5. QinQi Xu
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  6. ZhiLu Tang
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  7. Wei Wang
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  8. Yuan Wang
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  9. JinYi Liu
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  10. DaGong Qin
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  11. R. Lawrence Edwards
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  12. Hai Cheng
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to ChangZhu Jin.

Additional information

Supported by the Key Knowledge Innovation Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. KZCX2-YW-106) and National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2006CB806400)

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Jin, C., Pan, W., Zhang, Y. et al. The Homo sapiens Cave hominin site of Mulan Mountain, Jiangzhou District, Chongzuo, Guangxi with emphasis on its age. Chin. Sci. Bull. 54, 3848–3856 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-009-0641-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-009-0641-1

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