26Al/10Be Burial Dating of the Middle Pleistocene Yiyuan Hominin Fossil Site, Shandong Province, Northern China

Abstract

The Yiyuan hominin fossil site is one of the few localities in China where a partial skullcap and several loose teeth of Homo erectus have been discovered. Yiyuan was previously assigned broadly to the Middle Pleistocene by biostratigraphical correlation and ESR/U-series dating. Here, we report the first application of a radio-isotopic dating method to the site. 26 Al/ 10 Be burial dating results derived from two sand samples from the fossiliferous deposits show that the hominin fossils can be confidently dated to 0.64 ± 0.08 Ma (million years ago). The reliability of this age is supported by the zero age of modern fluvial sediment near the cave. Our result is consistent with the age estimation based on biostratigraphic correlation and supports the argument that the Yiyuan and Zhoukoudian Locality 1 H. erectus fossils are contemporaneous. The results presented here, along with other recent chronological studies on Chinese Middle Pleistocene hominin sites, indicate that the time span from 600–400 ka (thousand years ago) is a critical period for human evolution in East Asia. Importantly, this time bracket includes several major climatic changes that would have influenced hominins, both morphologically and behaviorally.

The reversal of human phylogeny: Homo left Africa as erectus, came back as sapiens sapiens

“…The expansion of Eurasian palaeontology has provided insight into the interwoven evolution of H. erectus and Hss in Eastern Eurasia [e.g. 23 , 26 , 29 – 31 , 33 , 40 , 41 , 45 , 50 , 51 , 56 , 61 , 63 , 64 , 67 , 69 , 86 ]. One of these studies [ 56 ] included a figure, modified here as Fig.…”

The genetic differentiation of a cricket (Velarifictorus micado) with two modes of life cycle in East Asia after the middle Pleistocene and the invasion origin of the United States of America

“…Species adapted to the new environment, while some remained and scattered in the locality during the Quaternary glaciation (Zhang, 2004). During the MPT, mid‐Pleistocene Homo (MPH) (Bae, 2010; Wu & Poirier, 1995) in East China adapted to the diverse and various climate, distributing from the temperate to subtropical zone (Guo et al., 2019; Kong et al., 2018). The climate shifts in MPT impose a strong influence on the diversification and distribution change of species.…”

Terahertz Dating of Sedimentary Rocks

“…Radiocarbon dating methods-key methods which are currently being used -have significant analytical limitations. These approaches may therefore result in significant chronological uncertainty for stratum, hampering a direct comparison with historical data [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. However, because this dating method has age limitations, after obtaining the approximate age, it is necessary to analyze the geological evolution law together with other testing methods.…”