title: Late Middle Pleistocene hominin teeth from Panxian Dadong, South China.
abstract: The hominin teeth and evidence of hominin activities recovered from 1991 to 2005 at the Panxian Dadong site in South China are dated to the late Middle Pleistocene (MIS 8-6 or ca. 130-300 ka), a period for which very little is known about the morphology of Asian populations. The present study provides the first detailed morphometric description and comparisons of four hominin teeth (I(1), C1, P(3) and P3) from this site. Our study shows that the Panxian Dadong teeth combine archaic and derived features that align them with Middle and Upper Pleistocene fossils from East and West Asia and Europe. These teeth do not display any typical Neanderthal features and they are generally more derived than other contemporaneous populations from Asia and Africa. However, the derived traits are not diagnostic enough to specifically link the Panxian Dadong teeth to Homo sapiens, a common problem when analyzing the Middle Pleistocene dental record from Africa and Asia. These findings are contextualized in the discussion of the evolutionary course of Asian Middle Pleistocene hominins, and they highlight the necessity of incorporating the Asian fossil record in the still open debate about the origin of H. sapiens.
authors: Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origin of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100044, China. liuwu@ivpp.ac.cn
authors: Wu
authors: W
authors: Liu
authors: Lynne A
authors: LA
authors: Schepartz
authors: Song
authors: S
authors: Xing
authors: Sari
authors: S
authors: Miller-Antonio
authors: Xiujie
authors: X
authors: Wu
authors: Erik
authors: E
authors: Trinkaus
authors: María
authors: M
authors: Martinón-Torres
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D002681:China; D005580:Fossils; D015186:Hominidae / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000235:genetics; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed; D014070:Tooth / Q000033:anatomy & histology*