An ancient skull, warped and damaged by the ravages of time and degradation, may have just altered our understanding of the history of modern humans.

Using careful 3D scanning and digital reconstruction techniques, a team of researchers from China and the UK has rebuilt the damaged artifact, discovering exactly where it fits on the hominid family tree.

It's not the skull of a modern human ancestor, but that of a closely related human. Even so, its age pushes back the timeline for the divergence between the ancestor of Homo sapiens and its close relatives , suggesting that the origin of our species is several hundred thousand years older than we thought it was.

Related: 1930s 'Dragon Man' Finally Gives Elusive Ancient Human Species a Face

Two skulls, known as Yunxian 1 and Yunxia

See Full Page