Dali (fossil)

The Dali Skull, or Dali Man , is a nearly complete fossilized skull, probably representing an early form of Archaic Homo sapiens which lived in the Late Middle Pleistocene period. It was discovered by Shuntang Liu in 1978 in Dali County in the Shaanxi Province of China

Although dating has been a subject of debate, the fossil is estimated to be about 209,000 years old, and is considered to be the most complete skull of that time period found in China.Xiao, J.L., Jin C., Zhu Y., "Age of the Fossil Dali Man in North-Central China deduced from Chronostratigraphy of the Loess-paleosol Sequence," Quaternary Science Reviews, Volume 21, Number 20 (12 November 2002), pp. 2191-2198 The Dali cranium is currently housed in the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, China.

Characteristics of the Dali fossil

The Dali cranium is interesting to modern anthropologists as it is possibly an ideal specimen of an archaic Homo sapiens. It has a mixture of traits from both Homo erectus and Homo sapiens.Wu X. (1981): A well-preserved cranium of an archaic type of early Homo sapiens from Dali, China. Scientia Sinica no 24: pp 530-539 The details of the face and skull are however distinct from European Neandertals and earlier European hominids like the finds from Petralona and Atapuerca.Wu X (1988): Comparative study of early Homo sapiens from China and Europe. Acta......
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