New dating of Chinese fossils narrows gap between ancient stone tools and early humans

New dating of Chinese fossils tightens the timeline between early stone tools and Homo erectus in East Asia.

The reconstruction of the two original Yunxian Homo erectus fossils, discovered in 1989 and 1990. Photo via Xiaobo Feng and Hua Tu

Archaeologists have identified stone tools in China that appear to predate the earliest regional fossils of Homo erectus by roughly 350,000 years. The gap between artifacts and human remains is raising new questions about the…