Abstract: Morphometric analysis of the crowns of six teeth from the Yiyuan site were compared with those of Homo erectus, archaic and late Homo sapiens from Asia, Australopithecus, African early Homo and recent Chinese. The present study shows that the Yiyuan teeth retain some primitive traits, including their trapezoidal outline shapes of the upper premolars and the straight mesial outline of the first upper molar. Other features are apomorphic, as manifested in the extent to which outline of P3 buccal cusp expands mesially and distally, the outline shape of the P4, which is close to that of the recent Chinese, the relatively large paracone size compared to the metacone in M1, and the roundness of the buccal outline and relatively restricted metaconid of M1. Fossil teeth of early and middle Pleistocene Chinese exhibit many similarities to each other, with no obvious differences being shown, therefore Chinese Homo erectus and archaic Homo sapiens could be treated as a sample group. The teeth from Yiyuan could also be placed in this group, however these teeth are quite “evolved ” compared with other sample members. It is noteworthy that M1 and M1 have a very large value of BL / MD, which surpasses each of corresponding specimens used in present study and may be meaningful in interpreting evolutionary progress.

Key words: Morphometric analysis; Yiyuan; dental shape; Homo erectus; archaic Homo sapiens