Early Homo Erectus Range In China Was Vast

XIAN, CHINA—Scientists in China have analyzed sediments at the Homo erectus site of Shangshazui in northern China, and discovered that members of that extinct human species were living there up to 1.7 million years ago, which is 700,000 years older than previously thought. Paleoanthropologists already knew that H. erectus had migrated to southern China by that time, but the age of the northern site came as a suprise. The discovery means that H. erectus ranged across a much vaster area than anthropologists once believed.