“Dragon Man”: a skull found in China could belong to a new human species

Harbin’s skull, one of the best-preserved human fossils in the world that has just been studied, is of the species Homo longi or “Dragon Man”, a new human line that documented Chinese scientists may be our next of kin. Another twist in complex human evolution.

the fossil this is the largest known human skull and is 146,000 years old, what places it Middle Pleistocene, one of the most dynamic periods in the migration of the human species. Although it was discovered in the 1930s in the town of Harbin, in the Chinese province of Heilongjiang, remained hidden (kept by the family of the man who found it) until 2018, when it was given to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Now has just been studied by a Chinese multidisciplinary team and their conclusions, which appear in three articles, are published today in the review Innovation, of the group Cell.

Scientists have cataloged the fossil in a new human species he called Homo longi or “Dragon Man” and It could revolutionize the current view of human evolution. “Skull combines primitive and derived characteristics that distinguish it from all other Homo species “, says the professor of paleontology of the Hebei GEO University. Quiang Ji, who, for this reason, decided to consider it a new species and baptize it The man a long time.

As described by its authors, the enormous skull could house a brain comparable in size to that of modern humans, although it has larger, almost square eye sockets, thick eyebrow arches, a wide mouth, and large teeth.

Scientists believe that It is the skull of a male of about 50 years old, that he lived in a forest and floodplain environment within a small community and that like the sapiens, they hunted, gathered fruits and vegetables, and “maybe even fished”, he explains Xijun Ni, professor of primatology and paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Due to its large size and where the skull was found, Researchers suggest that Homo longi was able to adapt to harsh environments, spread throughout Asia, and even encountered Homo sapiens during the Middle Pleistocene.

The authors come to a second conclusion and suggest that, Homo longi is one of our closest hominid relatives, even more so than the Neanderthals. “Our discovery suggests that the new lineage that we have identified and which includes Homo longi is the true brother group of sapiens ”, defend Or.

Moreover, the reconstruction of the tree of human life by these authors also suggests that the common ancestor we share with the Neanderthals existed even further back in time. “The time of divergence between H. sapiens and Neanderthals can be even deeper into the history of evolution than is generally believed, over a million years ago. If true, eIt is likely that we diverged from Neanderthals 400,000 years earlier than scientists thought ”, warns Or.

For the authors, The Homo longi were strong and hardy humans and their possible interactions with Homo sapiens could have shaped our history. “Generally, the Harbin skull provides us with additional evidence to understand Homo’s diversity and the evolutionary relationships between these various Homo species and populations. We have found our long lost line of brothers, ”he concludes. Or.

For his part, the paleoanthropologist of Superior Council for Scientific Research Antonio Rosas agrees that analyzes of this human fossil could “strongly influence future research on human evolution”, because contain “a revolutionary point, with implications in several key aspects of the evolution of the genus Homo”, details at EFE. And although the Spanish researcher is concerned that the authors have given a lot of weight to certain facial features considered to be derived in paleontology, he acknowledges that the morphological features of the face may in fact be “primitive characters inherited from a common ancestor”. “Without a doubt, the debate is served “, concludes the paleoanthropologist from CSIC.

With information from EFE

KEEP READING: