Skull fossil may offer key clues to human origins

Find could be best-preserved remains of Homo erectus found in Eurasian region

Archaeologists and paleontologists recently discovered a roughly 1-million-year-old human skull fossil in Central China's Hubei province, possibly offering a monumental clue in the study of the evolution of Homo erectus in East Asia, according to a news conference of the National Cultural Heritage Administration in Beijing on Wednesday.

The well-preserved fossil was found on May 18 in an excavation site known as Xuetangliangzi in the city of Shiyan's Yunyang district. Sediment samples have since been extracted for laboratory analysis to assist in dating the fossil, according to Gao Xing, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology.

The skull has not been fully excavated from the ground yet, but the part that has been exposed so far, including the frontal bone, eye sockets and left cheekbone and temporal bone, indicate that the skull's structure is intact.