million-year-old human skull found in China suggests that our species, Homo sapiens, began emerging at least half a million years earlier than previously thought, researchers argue in a study published in September 2025. It also shows that we coexisted with other sister species, including Neanderthals, for much longer than we think, they say. Human evolution is like a tree. This tree included several branches, and there were three closely related main ones, which may have interbred with each other and coexisted for nearly a million years: Homo sapiens, Homo longi, and Neanderthals.
