After more than five months of excavation, archaeologists have identified a new Paleolithic site at the Salawusu Site in Ordos, Inner Mongolia autonomous region, providing important evidence for human activity in northern China over the past 50,000 years.

Chen Fuyou, associate researcher at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, introduced that the newly discovered Xijia Paleolithic site follows the 2024 discovery of the Milanggouwan site.

More than 600 specimens have been unearthed, including about 80 stone tools and over 400 animal fossils, such as those of ancient straight-tusked elephants and antelopes, as well as burned animal bones.

The Salawusu Site was first discovered and excavated in 1922–23 by French scholars Emile Licent and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, yielding around 200 Paleolithic artifacts. Over time, however, the exact excavation locations became unclear. In 2021, IVPP and the Inner Mongolia Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology relaunched systematic excavations.

The five-year excavation program will conclude in 2025 and has produced major breakthroughs. Archaeologists have re-identified the earliest Paleolithic locality recorded in 1923, corrected earlier misjudgments about key fossil findspots, and discovered new cultural layers containing stone tools. Over the past five years, abundant stone artifacts, animal fossils, charcoal and ash have been recovered.

Researchers say the finely made stone tools follow a consistent "core–flake" reduction system and belong to a small-flake tool tradition long prevalent in northern China.

Their continuity supports the view of sustained cultural transmission and population evolution, shedding light on the origins of modern humans in East Asia. To date, one human fossil locality, four Paleolithic cultural sites, and 22 animal fossil concentrations have been identified at Salawusu.