Tibetan paradise handed to ancient apes on a plateau, Chinese scientists believe
Tropical haven on Tibetan Plateau may have provided last refuge for modern man's ancestor long after extinction elsewhere, scientists claim
A tropical paradise that existed more than six million years ago on the Tibetan Plateau may have provided a final shelter for a common ancestor of humans and apes, a new study claims.
The theory follows the discovery of a well-preserved hominoid skull by an international team of anthropologists working at the southeast tip of the plateau in Yunan's Zhaotong Basin.
The skull, unearthed in 2013, puzzled researchers when tests dated it to 6.2 million years ago - long after the extinction of ancient hominoids elsewhere in the world about 9 million years ago.
It is widely believed that a change in the global climate that brought about very dry and cold conditions across much of the planet led to the extinction of less adaptive hominoids and the appearance of more modern apes and early humans.
But the new study posits that the southeast of the plateau was one of a few places spared from this change, providing a last refuge for ancient hominoids that lasted many years after they had died out in other parts of the world.
Led by professor Guo Zhengtang at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, the researchers used the latest microscopic scanning techniques to examine sediment samples from the fossil discovery site.
These revealed the quantity and mixture of pollen fossils in unprecedented detail, enabling the scientists to reconstruct a picture of the climate and vegetation at the time.