A new report from the field of human origins had sub-editors reaching for their hyperboles. A million-year-old skull, we have learnt, has rewritten humanity’s story. The finality of this is misleading, but there is nonetheless something going on here.

If Neanderthals, Denisovans and sapiens evolved away from each other a million years ago, there must have been earlier human forms not yet seen

For decades, Chinese archaeologists have been investigating a site known as Yunxian, beside a tributary of the Yangtze river. The researchers have been rewarded with human fossils – to date, three skulls around a million years old. These bones have been preserved well but the skulls have been crushed. As a result, comparing them with other fossils, and therefore finding exactly which species they

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