‘Dragon man’ skull prompts evolution rethink
The story of Homo sapiens’ evolution may have been rewritten by the discovery in China of a large skull that some researchers suspect belongs to an entirely new species of ancient human. The perfectly preserved cranium was first unearthed in 1933 by a laborer in the northern Chinese city of Harbin. Rather than see the find fall into the hands of the country’s Japanese occupiers, the laborer wrapped it up and hid it in a well, reports The Guardian (U.K.). It remained there until 2018, when the man—who may have been ashamed of having worked for the Japanese—told his grandson his secret. A Chinese-led team of researchers now reports that the skull is at least 146,000 years old and belonged to a male in his early 50s who had a brain about as large as that of a modern human. He had facial features of earlier hominids, such as a broad nose and a low brow, combined with others more typical of Homo sapiens, including delicate cheekbones. The researchers say the skull is distinct enough to make it a new species, which they have named Homo longi, after the Chinese word for dragon, and think this branch of the human family tree could be more closely related to us than Neanderthals are. Other experts dispute the idea of a new lineage and say dragon man may be something equally exciting: a Denisovan, a mysterious human ancestor from Asia mainly known from DNA. Either way, says co-author Chris Stringer from the Natural History Museum in London, this is “one of the most important finds of the past 50 years.”