title: Late Pleistocene archaic human crania from Xuchang, China.
abstract: Two early Late Pleistocene (~105,000- to 125,000-year-old) crania from Lingjing, Xuchang, China, exhibit a morphological mosaic with differences from and similarities to their western contemporaries. They share pan-Old World trends in encephalization and in supraorbital, neurocranial vault, and nuchal gracilization. They reflect eastern Eurasian ancestry in having low, sagittally flat, and inferiorly broad neurocrania. They share occipital (suprainiac and nuchal torus) and temporal labyrinthine (semicircular canal) morphology with the Neandertals. This morphological combination reflects Pleistocene human evolutionary patterns in general biology, as well as both regional continuity and interregional population dynamics.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100044, China.|Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, Zhengzhou 450000, China.
authors.forename: Zhan-Yang
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-0086-5162
authors.initials: ZY
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100044, China. wuxiujie@ivpp.ac.cn trinkaus@wustl.edu.
authors.forename: Xiu-Jie
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-2893-9699
authors.initials: XJ
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes, Department of Geography, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
authors.forename: Li-Ping
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-3332-2343
authors.initials: LP
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100044, China.
authors.forename: Wu
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-8444-368X
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100044, China.|University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
authors.forename: Xing
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes, Department of Geography, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.|State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research, East China Normal University, 3663 North Zhongshan Road, Shanghai 200062, China.
authors.forename: Xiao-Mei
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-3164-9254
authors.initials: XM
authors.lastname: Nian
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA. wuxiujie@ivpp.ac.cn trinkaus@wustl.edu.
authors.forename: Erik
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-5175-1651
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Trinkaus
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D002681:China; D005580:Fossils / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D006801:Humans; D059125:Neanderthals / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D009777:Occipital Bone / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D012665:Semicircular Canals / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D012886:Skull / Q000033:anatomy & histology*