The iconic ancient human fossils from China known as the Peking Man are about 300,000 years older than usually thought, an archaeologist said Thursday.

Using a new dating method, a group of Beijing archaeologists concluded in the British journal Nature that the "Peking Man" fossils are about 770,000 years old, beating the previous estimates of 230,000-500,000 years.

The new date indicates that "this early human ancestor prospered in an earlier colder climate," Xing Gao, one of the archaeologists from Beijing-based Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, told Xinhua by telephone.

"It will lead us to rethink how these early hominins could adapt to the colder environment," Gao said. "Probably it provides further evidence that the early hominins used fire regularly."