Wu Xinzhi

Wu Xinzhi - 吴新智 - is a professor with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing, China, and has been working there for more than four decades. He studies human origins and is a proponent of the multiregional hypothesis, which argues that modern humans did not solely originate from Africa, but evolved as they migrated throughout the different continents.

In 1998, he then proposed a related hypothesis called "Continuity with Hybridization." This argued that anatomically modern humans of East Asia likely originated in China. Paleolithic archeology, along with the recent discovery of an 110,000-year-old human jawbone, provides evidence for this, Wu has said. 

Wu was born in Hefei City, located in China's Anhui Pronvince. He received his education from Shanghai Medical College, the Ministry of Healthy of Chinese Central Government, and then at the Chinese Academy of Science. Along with his position at the IVPP, he has also served as an honorary president of the Chinese Society for Anatomical Sciences and as a chief-editor of Acta Anthropologica Sinica. During his career he has published more than 100 papers and monographs mostly about paleoanthropology. Wu has also won several accolades for his work, such as the first prize for the Chinese Academy Science Awards of Natural Science in 1991.