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castanets from an extinct human ascendant have been recovered from the seafloor , reveal a antecedently unknownHomo erectuspopulation in Southeast Asia that may have interact with more modern man , fresh study find oneself .
TheH. erectusbones were among a cache of more than 6,000 brute fossils hoovered up as part of a construction project off the island of Java in Indonesia . This is the first sentence scientist have seen fossils from the submerge portion of the Indonesian archipelago , which connected islands like Java to the Asiatic mainland during thelast chalk age , when ocean stratum were lower .
Researchers found theHomo erectusbones in a cache of more than 6,000 fossils dredged up in the Madura Strait, Indonesia.
These lose lands , call off drowned Sundaland , were once vast heart-to-heart plains interspersed with rivers around 140,000 years ago . The newly identify fossils revealed the rivers were stream with fish , turtles , river sharks , hippos and other marine life , while tellurian giants such as elephant , the elephant - likeStegodonand water buffalo inhabit the knit , according to the studies .
H. erectus ' presence on this landscape confirms that our ancient ancestor was take vantage of drowned Sundaland ’s prolific hunt terra firma , at least between Java and another , small island call in Madura . This realm , once a vale , is now submerged in a body of seawater call the Madura Strait .
The researchers found cut marks on some of the fossil that confirmed the Madura Strait hominins ( world and our close congener ) were hunting turtles — the earliest grounds of this in Southeast Asia — and large game . The corpse also suggested that these hominins were selectively targeting cow - like bovids in their flower , which IndonesianH. erectusisn’t known for . This hunting scheme is relate with more modern humans on the Asiatic mainland , stir the possibility that the newly discoveredH. erectuspopulation copy the strategy from other human relative .
Berghuis searched the artificial island for fossils between 2015 and 2018.
" The Madura Strait hominins may have developed this hunting scheme independently , " field of study track authorHarold Berghuis , a researcher studyingH. erectusat Leiden University in the Netherlands , told Live Science in an e-mail . " But the other possibility is that we are await at a form of ethnic exchange . "
The research worker shared their findings in four separate studies publish last calendar week in the journalQuaternary Environments and Human .
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The researchers identified dozens of species from thousands of fossils collected at the Madura Strait site, inclduing turtles, sharks, hippos, elephants and Homo erectus.
H. erectusis an important part of our evolutionary history . Emerging at least 2 million yr ago , it was the first mintage to develophuman - alike body proportionsand the first human mintage to transmigrate out of Africa , finally find its direction to Southeast Asia . Other ancient man followed inH. erectus ' pace , but the extent to which these different metal money interact in Southeast Asia is unknown , and the genetics of these dissimilar hominins is uncertain .
Thehuman family treeis perplex , particularly in Southeast Asia . Berghuis note that by around 350,000 years ago , H. erectuswas being replaced on what is now the Asian mainland by a more forward-looking human population , which included the mysteriousDenisovansand theNeanderthals .
Fossil evidencesuggests thatH. erectuscontinued to live on the island of Java until around 117,000 to 108,000 class ago , when the metal money eventually went extinct . Our species , H. sapiens , arrived in Southeast Asia around77,000 old age ago .
Fossil island dream
The late fossil discovery was uncovered because of a large building labor in the Madura Strait . From 2014 to 2015 , contractile organ overstretch around 177 million three-dimensional feet ( 5 million cubic metre ) of Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin and sandstones from the Davy Jones near the larboard city of Surabaya to create an contrived island , according to one of the newstudiespublished May 15 .
To bump off the deposit , the contractors used a trailing suction hopper dredger , which is a ship that drags a blade structure along the seabed , breaking up the sediment and mixing it with water . A suck tube then hoovered up the deposit . This process , call in dredging , cannegatively touch maritime life , but the amount of equipment casualty change bet on the location and the species involved — invertebrate , eggs and larvae are most vulnerable to the practice . Berghuis noted that under Indonesian legislation , the dredging was subject to environmental impact assessment and supervision .
The hoover - up sediment was discharge at a Edwin Herbert Land reformation land site to create a 250 - acre ( 100 hectare ) sandy island . Berghuis had admittance to the website as a geotechnical consultant for the port of Surabaya , and pass many week searching on hands and knees for fossils . He tell Live Science that he " dreamed " of finding a hominin dodo , but it was n’t until his very last day of collecting that he in conclusion blot one .
" It was already getting dark and I baby-sit down to savor [ the ] sundown , " Berghuis said . " And then , right beside me , put this fossil that reminded me so much of the only Dutch Neanderthal . This is a well - known fossil in my country , dredged from the North Sea . "
Berghuis took the fossil , a skull fragment , back to his hotel way and compare it with images of thefamous Dutch Neanderthal . Its pronounced forehead ridgeline was similar to Neanderthals and other ancient humans . Berghuis and his colleagues by and by mold it belonged to an grownup or adolescentH. erectus .
The squad also identified anotherH. erectusskull fragment in the fossils Berghuis recovered . base on the heaviness of the 2d fragment , the team determined this individual had not reach adulthood , according to one of thestudies . The researcher could n’t settle how the individuals died .
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Land of dragons
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TheH. erectusdiscovery was just the tip of a mountain of finding document in the new studies . Researchers identified 36 dissimilar specie in a total of 6,372 recovered fossils . These include fogey of Komodo tartar ( Varanus komodoensis ) .
Komodo dragon are jumbo lounge lizard equal to of ( slowly)killing large animals , including water buffalo , with bacteria and maliciousness - laced bit . Today , they are an endangered metal money restricted to a few Indonesian islands , but the novel field suggest they could have rule the Sundaland plains .
" Komodo dragons may have been the most crucial piranha , " Berghuis said .
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