A mystery surrounding human fossils found in a cave in China has been solved by DNA sequencing, according to a new study, and it sheds light on the ancestry of the very first Americans.
In 1989, a thigh bone and part of a skull were found in a cave in the Chinese province of Yunnan in the southwest area of the country.
Radiocarbon dating conducted in 2008 on the sediments where the fossils were found indicated they were around 14,000 years old -- which would mean they were from a period of time when Homo sapiens (modern humans) had migrated to many parts of the world.
However, primitive features of the bones niggled scientists, who questioned what species of human the fossils belonged to.
The shape of the skull resembled that of Neanderthals -- an archaic human population that disappeared about 40,000 years ago -- and it seemed the brain would have been smaller than that of modern humans.
