Fig. 5: U-series dating results on the Liujiang human fossils.

a-1, dentine fragments dropped from the upper central incisor. a-2 and -3, bone splinters from the left femur. a-4 and −5, Sampling locations showing the two bone profiles for U-series dating and associated U-series ages. The details of the red box in panel a-4 are shown in panel a-5. b-1–8, Distributions of U-concentration, U-series isotopic ratios and apparent U-series ages for the two sampling profiles on the Liujiang left femur consisted of subsamples LJ20-1 to −9 and subsamples LJ20-(1) to -(8), respectively. Green curves represent DAD modelling results. The values of −1.0 and 1.0 on the x-axes (b-1–8) represent the inner and the out bone edges, respectively. c U-series evolution diagram showing the activity ratios observed on the Liujiang dentine and femur fossils and unearthed mammalian fossils. The details of the small box in panel c-1 are shown in panel c-2. Black lines are isochrones. Blue lines show U-series evolution in a closed-system for selected initial ²³⁴U/²³⁸U values. The error bars in panels (b) and (c) represent 2σ analytical uncertainties for the data of present study and 1σ for previous studies (c-1). Source Data for Figs. 2 and 4 can be found in Supplementary Data 2.