Million-year-old skull reconstruction hints at a new chapter in human evolution [View all]

Scientists have reconstructed a million-year-old skull found in central China, and say they've identified which group of early humans it belonged to.

The researchers suggest their findings, published today in the journal Science, push back when modern humans evolved.

Our species, Homo sapiens, is the only living species in the Homo genus.

But in the past million years, many other Homo species have wandered the Earth, and palaeontologists have have been trying to reconstruct the human family tree.

Previously, researchers thought the common ancestor of all human species, Homo erectus, diverged into several groups about 600,000 years ago.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2025-09-26/million-year-old-skull-reconstruction-and-human-evolution/105819746