Scientists: Inbreeding Common in Early Humans

Conclusion drawn from deformed skull

Inbreeding may have been a common practice among early human ancestors, fossils show.

The evidence comes from fragments of an approximately 100,000-year-old human skull unearthed at a site called Xujiayao, located in the Nihewan Basin of northern China. The skull's owner appears to have had a now-rare congenital deformity that probably arose throughinbreeding, researchers report today (March 18) in the journal PLOS ONE.