One of the key pieces of the puzzle of our long story arc as a human species may have gone into hiding in bottom of a well in China for almost a century. But now the almost intact, ancient skull of what may be our closest extinct relative – nicknamed Dragon Man – is a lot in the public eye as an object as of intense fascination and scientific debate.
The story goes that a worker in a bridge construction site in the Chinese city of Harbin dug up the skull in 1933, but hid it in a well to keep it from falling into your hands of the occupying Japanese army. Its existence was revealed only by the worker family in recent years and donated to Hebei Geo University for she studies.
Turn out the worker’s intuition that the skull might be significant was correct.
“The Harbin fossil is one of more complete human skull fossils in the world, ” says Qiang Ji, to professor of paleontology of Hebei Geo University and author of one studio on the skull, in a declaration. “This fossil has retained many . details that are critical for understand evolution of the genus Homo and the origin of Homo sapiens “.
The Harbin skull is the true big box of skulls for the genus Homo. It is a huge dome with camera for a modern human brain but with bigger and a little squared off-off eye sockets, massive eyebrows, wide mouth and bigger teeth.
Scientists including Ji believe the skull, which is thought to come from a male who lived up to about 50 years, it is a specimen of a previously unrecognized human species nicknamed Homo longi or “Dragon Man”. a trio of the researchers’ documents were released Friday in a newspaper called The Innovation and suggest in provocative way that we are closely related to Dragons, or at least with Dragon Man and Dragon Woman.
“Like Homo sapiens, they hunted mammals and birds, harvested fruits and vegetables, and perhaps even caught fish,” notes co-author Xijun Ni, a professor of paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Hebei Geo University.
Geochemical dating places the skull at 146,000 years or more, an era in which the human species existed on the move long with woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos and possibly giant beavers. His also possible that Dragon Man and his clan would meet the first Homo sapiens.
“Overall, the Harbin skull provides more test for us to understand homo diversity and evolutionary relationships “, Ni says. “We found our long-lost lineage of sisters. ”
However, not all scientists, not even all of them on the research team – agree on just how new of a species that could actually be.
“Harbin is best understood as a Denisovian”, paleoanthropologist Karen Baab, who he wasn’t involved with the research, he told the New York Times.
The Denisovas were an archaic human species thought to wander in much the same way area during the same period. But scientists base their knowledge of these extinct people on a little DNA and very little remains, certainly nothing as substantial as the Dragon Man skull.
So it could be, as Baab and others think, that the skull of Dragon Man is really the first look we’re getting of a Denisovian profile.
Chris Stringer of the National History Museum in London, who it was a part of the research team, says agrees that Dragon Man deserves a distinct species name, but thinks the skull might also be connected to the famous Dalì Man skull, also found in China.
“I’d rather place the Harbin and Dali fossils together as (Homo) daliensis, ” Stringer writes.
Some comments on the Harbin cranium (“Dragon Man”) pic.twitter.com/eiq1N8N0Pq
— Chris Stringer (@ChrisStringer65) June 25, 2021
While few seem unanimous on the specific interpretation of what is Dragon Man? debut means, Stringer speaks for numerous other scientists who agree is a big deal.
“These differences of opinion, “Stringer says, “should do not deviate from a notable new piece in the puzzle of human evolution, a fossil that will continue to add important information for many years to come”.
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