Retesting of ancient teeth found in China shows they are 16,000 years old—not 120,000

A team of researchers affiliated with a host of institutions in China, along with one from Australia, one from Taiwan and one from the U.S., has found evidence that contradicts the finding of a prior effort that reported ancient human teeth found at a dig site in China were 120,000 years old. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes how they tested the teeth and what they found.

Most archeologists agree that modern humans evolved approximately 500,000 to 315,000 years ago, and they migrated out of Africa approximately 65,000 to 45,000 years ago into parts of Eurasia—other non-modern-human hominins made the trek much earlier, but all went extinct. This timeline was called into question back in 2015 when a team of archeologists found fossilized teeth in five caves in a southern part of China, and claimed they were approximately 120,000 years old. In this new effort, the researchers have reexamined the teeth and have found the original researchers were in error—their testing showed the teeth are just 16,000 years old. Read the free article.