Ancient teeth found in cave may be evidence of earliest humans in China

Science : Some 47 teeth found in the newly excavated Fuyan Cave in southern China indicate that modern humans lived there at least 80 000 years ago. The finding is the first fossil evidence of the earliest modern humans in the region and indicates that they reached southern China long before they arrived in northern China or Europe. According to a team led by Wu Liu and Xiu-Jie Wu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, the small teeth they found barely differ from modern Chinese teeth. They dated them indirectly by using the radioactive decay of uranium to determine the age of a stalagmite that grew on top of the layer in which they found the teeth. Although some researchers dispute the teeth’s age, their discovery is likely to spur debate concerning where modern humans first evolved and their dispersal pattern across the globe.