Researchers believe a fossilized skull found in China and dubbed “dragon man” could be the missing link between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.
The large skull, found 85 years ago by a laborer who hid it in a well, is only now being studied by scientists who believe it may be the long-sought evolutionary bridge between the two human species. They estimate that it is at least 140,000 years old.
“This is a remarkable new piece in the jigsaw of human evolution, a fossil that will continue to add important information for many years to come,” said professor Chris Stringer, the research leader at the Natural History Museum in London, who worked on the project examining the skull. “It is one of the best-preserved of all ancient human fossils.”
Scientists on the project believe the big-browed skull could serve as a more plausible and direct ancestor to modern humans than the previously believed Neanderthal link. The findings surrounding the skull were published in three scientific papers in The Innovation.
The skull’s discovery predated its scientific analysis because the Chinese worker who found it at a construction site in the province of Heilongjiang during the Japanese occupation hid it.
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Hidden down a well for nearly a century, a remarkably strange skull may belong to an entirely new human species: Homo longi, or the Dragon Man https://t.co/OWQ6RFHSpK
— National Geographic (@NatGeo) June 25, 2021
It resurfaced in 2018 after the man who hid it told his grandson about it before he died. An international team of researchers at Hebei GEO University in China utilized geochemical techniques to pinpoint that the skull came to rest near the Songhua River in Harbin.
Researchers believe that the skull, which is nine inches long and five inches wide, belonged to a male Homo longi that was around 50 years old at the time of its death.
“Homo longi is heavily built, very robust,” said professor Xijun Ni, a paleoanthropologist at Hebei GEO University. “It is hard to estimate the height, but the massive head should match a height higher than the average of modern humans.”
There are some scientists, however, who have called the idea of a new lineage of humans “a provocative claim.”
“I think it’s a bad moment in science to be naming new species among these large-brained humans that all interbred with each other,” University of Wisconsin-Madison professor John Hawks told the Guardian. “What we are repeatedly finding is that the differences in looks didn’t mean much to these ancient people when it comes to breeding.”
Other researchers have noted that if the skull is not an entirely new species related to human ancestry, it is more evidence toward the complexity of evolution.
“The beautifully preserved Chinese Harbin archaic human skull adds even more evidence that human evolution was not a simple evolutionary tree but a dense intertwined bush,” said Mark Maslin, a professor of earth system science at University College London and the author of The Cradle of Humanity.
“We now know that there were as many as 10 different species of hominins at the same time as our own species emerged,” Maslin said.
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A skull preserved almost perfectly for more than 140,000 years in northeastern China represents a new species of ancient people more closely related to us than even Neanderthals — and could fundamentally alter our understanding of human evolution https://t.co/1zxWuL4tQZ
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) June 25, 2021
The Washington Examiner contacted the Natural History Museum in London but did not immediately receive a response.
