At https://dailygalaxy.com/2026/03/java-sea-homo-erectus-giant-beasts-discovery/ … dredging in the Madura Strait in Java uncovered ancient animal remains and two pieces of skull. They are said to belong to a now drowned landscape between 140,000 and 130,000 years ago. This is not too distant from the last interglacial – but apparently, it belongs to the late Middle Pleistocene. The main news is that the skull fragments are positively associated with Homo erectus – long known from Java itself. The Madura Strait, at the time, was dry land, and the team went on to uncover a world that had vanished beneath changing sea levels. Sundaland, at the time, was a vast lowland zone, and is typically continental shelf in nature. It was clearly above sea level – but the Madura Strait may not have been that way in later times. For example, in the early Holocene. A connection with SE Asia persisted for a long time but parts of it may not have emerged in later periods. Obviously, a bit of guesswork at the moment. More research is necessary but an interesting find – a total of 6000 fossils were brought up by the dredger, from the sand that had buried the landscape.
