China's Earliest Modern Human Found

An early modern human from China dated to about 40,000 years ago adds to evidence that the first Homo sapiens sapiens occasionally mated with older human species such as Neandertals.

The remains—which represent the oldest known example of modern humans found in China—share a few characteristics with older human species, according to a new study.

Other experts have argued that early modern humans and Neandertals were genetically distinct and therefore couldn't interbreed.

Such findings support the long-held theory that modern humans out-competed and eventually replaced other species as the modern humans spread out of Africa.

But the Chinese skeleton and similarly dated specimens from Europe and Asia have traits that had already been lost in the earliest modern humans found in Africa, said Erik Trinkaus, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

If the replacement theory is correct, the 40,000-year-old skeletons should look like modern human fossils from Africa or slightly more evolved, he explained.

"What we find is overwhelmingly they do," he said. "But these archaic characteristics that had been lost in African moderns keep popping up."