Evolutionary history just got a bit more complex.
A paper published in the journal Nature on Wednesday revealed that scientists have discovered what they believe is a new species of ancient human on the island of Luzon in the Philippines.
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Still, experts have been able to glean significant information from the fragments, which date from between 50,000 and 67,000 years ago. For instance, the small size of the teeth suggests these humans were shorter than four feet tall, The Guardian explains, and the presence of a curved toe bone indicates the species may have been well adapted to climbing trees.
The Wall Street Journal reports the discovery also brings a region of the Pacific, which scientists long believed a "backwater of evolution," into "the mainstream of early human development." All told, the discovery adds another layer to the complexity of human evolution, as it lends credence to the idea that there were multiple distinct human species alive simultaneously after emergence of Homo sapiens.
Questions remain about how the humans arrived at Luzon. One possibility is "early humans set out to sea intentionally on some form of raft," The Guardian reports, though they also could have been washed to the area by a natural event such as a tsunami. While the latter hypothesis is currently favored by many scientists, there is a growing case for the possibility that ancient humans had a more purposeful settlement plan on islands in Southeast Asia.
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