Analysis of an ancient thigh bone suggests that a species of early hominin may have survived as late as 14,000 years ago in southwest China.

The bone was discovered in 1989 along with other human remains at a site known as Maludong, or Red Deer Cave. Scientists have not yet ascribed the bone to a particular species.

But in a study in the journal PLOS One, Darren Curnoe, a paleontologist at the University of New South Wales Australia, and his colleagues report that the thigh bone strongly resembles those of Homo erectus or Homo habilis, which lived around 1.5 million years ago or more in Africa.