The Tam Pa Ling skull is small and belonged to a young adult at least 18 years old.
Notes on verification
Confirmed via multiple independent peer-reviewed sources (Demeter et al. 2012 PNAS, 2017 Current Anthropology, Shackelford et al. 2017) corroborating both small cranial size and young-adult dental maturity indicators; the specific '18 years' figure is a reasonable secondary paraphrase of dental-stage evidence rather than an exact primary-source statement. [tier=gold indep_score=0.963 clusters=4 claim_tier=notable | framework convergence=partial on Original TPL1 fossil description and dental/cranial metric analysis by the Demeter/Shackelford excavation team (upstreams: Demeter et al. 2012 PNAS 'Anatomically modern human in Southeast Asia (Laos) by 46 ka', Demeter et al. 2017 Current Anthropology fossil review) — publishers independent, evidence may not be | kind=empirical eligibility=high]
Sources
- Digs & Discoveries - Settling Southeast Asia - Archaeology Magazine - November/December 2012 (seed:history_and_archaeology)
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-oldest-human-fossils-in-southeast-asia-16207900/ (corroboration)
- https://factsanddetails.com/asian/cat62/sub406/entry-2811.html (corroboration)
- https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/694192 (corroboration)
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1040618215302731 (corroboration)