ESR/U-series study of teeth recovered from the palaeoanthropological stratum of the Dali Man site (Shaanxi Province, China)

The Dali skull is a key fossil for understanding human evolution in China. It has been attributed either to an archaic Homo sapiens, an evolved Homo erectus or to other species of Homo, such as Homo heidelbergensis. The cranium was discovered in 1978 in Shaanxi Province in a fluvial terrace which was recovered by a loessic sequence including two interglacial palaeosoils. ESR/U-series data analyses were carried out on several teeth recovered from the palaeoanthropological level. Four samples exhibit different kinds of uranium-uptake behaviour, but the results seem to indicate that the cranium is coeval with Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 8 and that some teeth might be reworked from older deposits.