The researchers believe the skull belonged to a male, about 50 years old, who would have been an impressive physical specimen. His wide, bulbous nose allowed him to breathe huge volumes of air, indicating a high-energy lifestyle, while sheer size would have helped him withstand the brutally cold winters in the region. “Homo longi is heavily built, very robust,” said Prof Xijun Ni, a paleoanthropologist at Hebei. “It is hard to estimate the height, but the massive head should match a height higher than the average of modern humans.” Dragon Man likely lived in a small band of hunter-gatherers, with a family or with multiple families living together. It’s really difficult to say what those family groups looked like. Were there bonded pairs of mates, or polyamorous groupings? Were they egalitarian? We’d really need to get more artifacts of material culture from that area to answer some of these questions. One of the most fascinating things about the discovery of Dragon Man is that it was found at the bottom of a well after being hidden there nearly 80 years ago. Is this as unusual as it seems to me, or is this sort of treasure stashing something that archaeologists often come across? Every so often, the fossilized discovery of a previously unknown human ancestor sends ripples around the world, as anthropologists and the public are mesmerized by a new window into the story of us. Will we learn more about how we came to be and who we are today, or what life was like for those who lived thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years ago?

An international team led by Prof Qiang Ji at the Hebei Geo University in China drew on geochemical techniques to narrow down when the skull came to rest in Harbin, dating the bones to at least 146,000 years old. The skull has a unique combination of primitive and more modern features, with the face, in particular, more closely resembling Homo sapiens. One huge molar remains. Keep reading list of 3 items list 1 of 3 Researchers find ‘new type of early human’ near Israel’s Ramla list 2 of 3 A mammoth discovery: Giant remains found near Mexico City list 3 of 3 World’s oldest DNA sequenced from million-year-old mammoths end of list The idea that Homo erectus is something completely different from us is an artifact of needing to name this older group of specimens that look slightly different from contemporary humans. But they are definitely our immediate ancestors. The Dragon Skulls are here to assist those lightworkers who are ready to awaken in consciousness and are ready for the shifts in their DNA structure, which is occurring for all at this time as we move into holding a crystalline matrix. Still, the skull underscores how tangled the branches are in the human family tree, and how studying the full array of enigmatic human ancestors and their shifting distribution through time could help us decipher our own origins.

A large skull with human features

The researchers estimated Dragon Man’s evolutionary status using statistical comparisons to other Middle Pleistocene Homo fossils from Africa, Asia and Europe. These comparisons indicated that H. longi shared a common ancestor with H. sapiens around 949,000 years ago, while the common ancestor of Neandertals and H. sapiens dated to just over 1 million years ago. If so, then H. longi had a slightly closer evolutionary relationship to H. sapiens than Neandertals did.

Katerina Harvati, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany who was not involved in the new study, said that the Dragon Man skull could “help clarify some of the confusion.”

Kat J. McAlpine

a b c d e f g h i j k l m Ni, X.; Ji, Q.; Wu, W.; etal. (2021). "Massive cranium from Harbin in northeastern China establishes a new Middle Pleistocene human lineage". The Innovation. 2 (3): 100130. Bibcode: 2021Innov...200130N. doi: 10.1016/j.xinn.2021.100130. ISSN 2666-6758. PMC 8454562. PMID 34557770. S2CID 236784246. In 2019, scientists announced the discovery of a fractured jaw on the Tibetan Plateau that likely came from a Denisovan, which would make the bone the first fossil of these ancient humans found outside the cave that gives the group its name. Looking at this transitional period of Middle Pleistocene humans, which Dragon Man falls into, can give us a better idea of when we evolved the cranial traits that we associate with our becoming Homo sapiens, and also how much regional variation plays a role in the differences we see in the fossil record. We had early humans living in very different ecologies in very different parts of the world during the Middle Pleistocene, which can produce different superficial features, just like we see in contemporary human populations today. You say that Homo erectus, long thought to be a different, earlier species of human ancestor, might even be an example of an early human instead of a different species. From an archaeologist’s perspective, where does one species end and another species begin? What comes next really depends on how well the skull is preserved. To get genomic data, we’d need to take a small piece of that skull, grind it up, and sequence it for DNA in a very carefully controlled setting to make sure the sample isn’t contaminated with DNA from contemporary humans. At 146,000 years old, it’s theoretically possible to get DNA out of it. If it was in a relatively warm, wet area, however, there might be less DNA preserved. But the original discovery of Denisovan DNA came from the fossil record—that tooth and pinky finger I mentioned—so I’m very optimistic that it’s possible. Having a full cranium is amazing, and I’m really happy they posted so many images of it so we can see what it looks like. At this point, paleoanthropologists have only just taken the first step of characterizing how this individual fits into human history. How might Dragon Man fit into that picture, given the initial characterization?

The discovery of the Harbin cranium and our analyses suggest that there is a third lineage of archaic human [that] once lived in Asia, and this lineage has [a] closer relationship with H. sapiens than the Neanderthals,” says Xijun Ni, a paleoanthropologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Hebei GEO University. If so, that would make the strange skull a close relative indeed since most humans today still have significant amounts of Neanderthal DNA from repeated interbreeding between our species. This is actually fairly common—you read about [specimen] caching in a number of cases. We see archaeologists come into an area, collect a bunch of specimens, and then they go into a drawer, waiting for a graduate student or contract archaeologist to catalog and analyze them. Maybe whoever has them in their possession is interested in something else, and they have lots of specimens to choose from studying, so a lot of times these groundbreaking finds are just waiting for someone to realize what they are. Measures of the decay of radioactive uranium in the Harbin skull provided its minimum age estimate of 146,000 years. Chemical analyses of the fossil and sediment still attached to it indicate an origin in the Harbin area, even if the researchers can’t confirm the farmer’s story to Ji. An artist’s reconstruction shows an adult male, based on a nearly complete fossil skull, who belonged to a newly proposed Homo species that lived at least 146,000 years ago in what’s now northern China. Chuang Zhao

Does Dragon Man represent a new human species?

One way to solve the mystery of Dragon Man would be to get DNA from his remarkable skull. Dr. Stringer said he is ready for more surprises.

Gibbons, A. (2021). "Stunning 'Dragon Man' skull may be an elusive Denisovan—or a new species of human". Science. doi: 10.1126/science.abk1691 (inactive 1 August 2023). {{ cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of August 2023 ( link) If not its own species, what was the Dragon Man? Stringer points to a similar mix of modern and more ancient traits in a fossil called the Dali cranium, which the new study categorized in the same group as the Harbin skull. Found in Shaanxi Province in Northwest China, this skull is considered its own species, Homo daliensis.Then there are the mysterious Denisovans. Though not formally recognized as its own species, this group likely inhabited Asia for tens of thousands of years, and many Asian fossils have been suggested as members. But because scientists have found only meager fossil traces of their existence, genetic confirmation is necessary—and DNA preservation becomes increasingly unlikely with older fossils.