‘Bear bones’: Japan’s 20,000-year-old ‘Ushikawa man’ fossils present in Nineteen Fifties aren’t of a human in any respect

The 20,000-year-old fossilised stays of what was regarded as one in all Japan’s oldest people, often known as “Ushikawa Man,” are literally the bones of an historical bear, new analysis has revealed.

The fossils, unearthed within the late Nineteen Fifties within the Ushikawa district of Toyohashi, about 140 miles southwest of Tokyo, have lengthy been thought of amongst Japan’s most vital prehistoric discoveries. Nevertheless, doubts about their human origin surfaced within the Eighties and have now been definitively resolved.

A examine printed within the journal Anthropological Science confirmed that the fossils belong to a brown bear (Ursus arctos), LiveScience reported.

Historic misidentification

The Ushikawa fossils had been initially recognized as elements of a human humerus (higher arm bone) and femur (leg bone), believed to be over 20,000 years previous.

However Suwa’s staff used computed tomography (CT) scans and visible evaluation to conclude that the humerus was really a bear’s radius (forearm bone), and the femur was additionally from a bear.

Suwa famous that bear bones from this era are uncommon in Japan, and palaeontologists within the Nineteen Fifties had restricted information of their traits. Regardless of the misidentification, the researchers on the time made “detailed and really correct” descriptions and picked up an intensive fossil file.

Shifting narratives

The reassessment of the Ushikawa fossils follows earlier scrutiny of one other purportedly historical human discover in Japan. A fossil fragment often known as “Akashi Man,” regarded as greater than 780,000 years previous, was misplaced throughout an Allied air raid on Tokyo in World Conflict II.

Within the Eighties, an evaluation of a plaster solid urged it was probably a contemporary human bone that had been misplaced in a unique archaeological layer.

This earlier misstep spurred larger consideration on the Ushikawa fossils, in the end resulting in their reclassification as bear bones.

Oldest human fossils in mainland Japan

The invention implies that the oldest confirmed human fossils on Japan’s mainland now come from a limestone quarry close to Hamakita, about 25 miles east of Ushikawa.

These stays embody fragments of a leg bone, arm bone, collarbone, and cranium, attributed to 2 people who lived roughly 14,000 and 17,000 years in the past.