“Dragon man”: the surprising discovery in China of a possible ancient human species until now unknown

An analysis of the skull was published this Friday in the magazine Innovation.

One of Britain’s leading experts in human evolution, Professor Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, was part of the research team.

“In terms of fossils over the past million years, this is one of the most significant to date,” Stringer told BBC News.

“What we have here is a separate branch of humanity that is not in the process of becoming homo sapiens (our species), but rather represents a distinct lineage that evolved in the region over several hundred thousand years and eventually became extinct, ”he added.

Researchers say discovery has the potential to rewrite the history of human evolution.

Their analysis suggests that it is more closely related to the homo sapiens than with Neanderthals.

Scientists attributed the specimen to a new species: In a plus, from the Chinese word “long”, which means dragon.

“We have found our lost brother line,” said Xijun Ni, professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and GEO Hebei University in Shijiazhuang.

“I said ‘Oh my God!’ I couldn’t believe it was so well preserved You can see all the details It’s a truly amazing find!

The skull is huge compared to average skulls belonging to other human species, including our own. His brain was comparable in size to those of our species.

The “dragon man” had large, almost square eye sockets, thick eyebrows, a wide mouth, and large teeth.

Hebei University GEO Professor Qiang Ji said that it is one of the earliest most complete human skull fossils ever discovered.

“It has a combination of primitive and (more modern) characteristics, which is distinguished from all other human species,” explained the researcher.

Scientists believe that “the dragon man” was physically strong and robust. But little is known about his life, as his skull was removed from the site where it was found.

This means that there is currently no archaeological context, such as stone tools or other elements of their culture.

The skull was discovered in 1933 by a bricklayer working on the construction of a bridge over the Songhua River, which runs through Harbin, Heilongjiang Province.

The name of the river means “black dragon”, which is why the new human was named “dragon man”.

The city was then under Japanese occupation. Suspecting its cultural value, the Chinese worker smuggled it home to keep it out of reach of the occupants. He hidden about 80 years old.

The man told his family about the skull before his death, so it eventually fell into the hands of scientists.

The “dragon man” joins a series of early human remains found in China that have proven difficult to classify. These include the remains of Dali, Jinniushan, Hualongdong and Xiahe Jawbone from the Tibetan Plateau.

There has been a heated debate as to whether these remains represent primitive examples of homo sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans, or something entirely different.

The Denisovans were first identified from DNA recovered from a 50,000 to 30,000 year old finger bone found in the Denisova cave in Russia.

Because the remains associated with this Neanderthal sister line were so fragmented, the group has been described as a “fossil record-seeking genome.”

Professor Marta Mirazon Lahr, University of Cambridge, at UK, he believes that “dragon man” he was, in fact, a Denisovan.

“The Denisovans are a fascinating and mysterious population from the past. There are hints (from DNA evidence) that the jawbone found on the Tibetan plateau may have come from a Denisovan,” he said. “And now, because the Tibetan jawbone and the ‘dragon man’ look alike, we might have Denisovan’s first face.”

The scientific team that recently published details of the remains found in Israel belonging to a possible precursor species of Neanderthals, believe that “dragon man” may be the descendant of humans who first emerged in this region.

But Chinese researchers argue that the hard-to-classify fossils from East Asia represent the gradual evolution of a new species. Professor Ni has a kind response to those who disagree with this assessment.

“The results will generate a lot of debate and I’m pretty sure a lot of people will disagree with us,” he said.

“But it’s science and it’s because we don’t agree that science is advancing.”

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