New Discovery Of Late Pleistocene Modern Human Teeth In Chongzuo,Guangxi,Southern China

An increasing number of multidisciplinary field and laboratory projects focused on archaeological sites and fossil localities from different areas of Asia are resulting in the discovery of many important findings.Ancient human fossils are increasingly being discovered in southern China,particularly in the karst caves of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.But to date,relatively few areas in Guangxi have been systematically investigated and excavated.Beginning in 2016 we conducted a field survey reconnaissance in Chongzuo City,southwest Guangxi that resulted in the discovery of eight new vertebrate fossil localities.One of these sites is Yanli Cave,which in addition to yielding rich mammalian fossils,included the discovery of three hominin fossil teeth.Based on morphological and metric comparisons,we tentatively assigned these four teeth to Homo sapiens.The associated fauna suggests a Late Pleistocene age for the deposits,with the age further narrowed to 30 ~ 65 ka based on dates derived from optically stimulated luminescence applied to the associated sediment.Following the application of different dating methods(U-series,C14,laser ablation U-series,OSL,faunal correlation),this initial age of the Yanli Cave human fossils will likely be further narrowed.The findings from Yanli and other nearby caves in Chongzuo,and broader regions of southern China,provide new evidence for the origin and evolution of modern humans in eastern Asia.