140,000-year-old Homo erectus bones discovered on ‘drowned land’ in Indonesia– www.livescience.com

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Bones from an extinct human ancestor have been recovered from the seafloor, revealing a previously unknown Homo erectus population in Southeast Asia that may have interacted with more modern humans, new studies find.

The H. erectus bones were among a cache of more than 6,000 animal fossils hoovered up as part of a construction project off the island of Java in Indonesia. This is the first time scientists have seen fossils from the submerged parts of the Indonesian archipelago, which connected islands like Java to the Asian mainland during the last ice age, when sea levels were lower.

These lost lands, called drowned Sundaland, were once vast open plains interspersed with rivers around 140,000 years ago. The newly discovered fossils revealed the rivers were teeming with fish, turtles, river sharks, hippos and other marine life, while terrestrial giants such as elephants, the elephant-like Stegodon and water buffalo populated the plains, according to the studies.