Current Events > 300,000-year-old skull found in China unlike any early human seen before

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An ancient skull dating back 300,000 years is unlike any other premodern human fossil ever found, potentially pointing to a new branch in the human family tree, according to new research.
An international team of researchers from China, Spain and the United Kingdom unearthed the skull specifically the mandible, or lower jaw in the Hualongdong region of eastern China in 2015, along with 15 other specimens, all thought to originate from the late Middle Pleistocene period.

It is similarly shaped to the mandible of Homo sapiens, our modern human species that evolved from Homo erectus. But it also shares a characteristic of a different branch that evolved from Homo erectus, the Denisovans. Like the Denisovans, HLD 6 does not appear to have a chin.
HLD6 does not present a true chin but has some weakly expressed traits that seem to anticipate this typically H. sapiens feature, said study author Mara Martinn-Torres, director of the National Research Center on Human Evolution (CENIEH) in Spain.

HLD 6 does not appear to have a chin.