Is China’s ‘Dragon Man’ from a new branch of the human family tree?

Scientists say a skull found by a farmer in the 1930s could point to a new species or belong to the Denisovan line thought to have lived throughout Asia

The fossil is a new piece in the jigsaw puzzle of human evolution and much more work needs to be done, researchers say

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A virtual reconstruction of the Harbin skull that scientists have named “Dragon Man”. Photo: EurekaAlert! via AFP

Published: 11:02pm, 26 Jun 2021Updated: 8:28am, 27 Jun 2021

An almost complete skull found in northeastern China promises to shed light on human evolution for many years to come even as researchers debate whether the find represents an entirely new species, according to scientists involved in the study.

In a series of scientific papers, a group of scientists from China and Britain said the skull – found by a farmer in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, in the 1930s and buried in a well for the next 85 years – did not belong to any existing branch of the human family tree.

The scientists named the new species Homo longi, or “Dragon Man”, and said the species may well replace Neanderthals as the closest relative of modern humans.

The skull was probably male, was at least 146,000 years old, and represented “a new sister lineage for Homo sapiens”, the researchers said in the three papers published in the journal The Innovation on Thursday.

But some scientists argued that instead of belonging to a new species, the skull could be a Denisovan, a line of ancient humans who are thought to have lived throughout Asia.

Even if the skull is Denisovan, the find would be just as stunning, scientists said, because so little remains of this group.

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