A mysterious ancient human-like skull found in China may have been the love child of two species, researchers say.
They believe the 900,000-year-old individual was a hybrid: part us, Homo sapien, and part Homo longi, a long-lost species known as “Dragon Man.”
The skull, named ‘Yunxian Man’ after the Yunyang district of Hubei province was discovered in 2022, baffled archaeologists due to its strange shape and features.
The new study recreated a full 3D model of the skull, revealing that it had facial bones of a human but a flattened skull, box-shaped eyes, and a thicker eyebrow bone of Homo longi.
He concluded, based on preliminary findings, that the person nicknamed ‘the Yunxian Man’, after the lineage of our ‘long-lost sister lineage’.
This partial skull fossil, which was damaged over time, was reconstructed in all its glory using 3D models. This led researchers to believe that this could be one of the last common ancestors between the Dragonmen and humans.
Dragon Man, scientifically called Homo longi, had a thick upper brow bone and large, square eye sockets. An illustrator described that probability here.
“It is reasonable to conclude that Yunxian is morphologically and chronologically close to the last common ancestor of the H. sapiens and Dragon Man lineages,” the authors wrote in the study published as a preprint on the research site. BioRxiv.
The skull was one of three found in China in the past 50 years that initially baffled scientists, unable to identify its origins.
It may seem like simple science to determine which bone suits which species, but scientists still haven’t agreed on how many human-like species there were in our recent archaeological history, Anna Goldfield, an archaeologist at Boston University, wrote for. Sapiens.org.
It is widely accepted that there were two archaic human species, the Neanderthals and the Denisovans, who roamed the Earth as distinct groups until about 30,000 years ago and had distinct characteristics.
But The Yunxian Man’s skull was difficult to put into a single category.
Because of its physical characteristics and location, researchers had thought it could be a member of the Denisovan family that originated in Asia about 500,000 years ago.
While Yunxian Man had an elongated skull, similar to that of the Denisovans, he also had distinct, square eyes that set him apart.
However, researchers have speculated that the ‘Dragon Man’ lineage could include the Denisovans, as the groups lived on Earth at around the same time.
After analyzing the new skull, researchers determined that its features were similar to those found in early humans and Dragon Men, meaning it was likely a descendant of both.
Homo longi had large, blocky eye sockets, molars much larger than ours, a thick brow bone and a brain size similar to that of humans, Professor Goldfield said.
And these characteristics were observed in the Yunxian man skull.
“The reconstructed Yunxian 2 suggests that it is an early member of the Asian ‘Dragon Man’ lineage, which likely includes the Denisovans, and is the sister group to the Homo sapiens lineage,” the authors wrote.
“Both the H. sapiens and Dragon Man lineages had deep roots extending beyond the Middle Pleistocene, and the basal position of the Yunxian fossil skull suggests that it represents a population close to the last common ancestor of the two lineages.”
This article has not yet been reviewed by other scientists, but previous research on Dragon Men by the lead author, paleoanthropologist Xijun Ni, has been published in journals such as The Innovation.
Modern humans formed their own species, called Homo sapiens, about a million years ago. They started in Africa, but soon spread throughout the world.
The researchers used 3D models to reconstruct the skull, as it had been damaged and flattened.
Neanderthals originated in Europe and Asia about 400,000 years ago.
Their skulls were long, had a thick crest above the eyes, and had a wider and larger nose than most modern Homo sapiens.
They also had a weaker and less prominent chin, according to the NHM.
Denisovans are also native to Asia, as their only fossils have been found in Siberia and China, but researchers believe they probably roamed throughout the Asian continent, according to The Australian Museum.
Relatively little is known about this class of humans, as researchers have only found 11 partial Denisovan fossils.
Even with that limited selection, the scientists determined that the Denisovans’ jaws were much more distinct than those of Neanderthals. Its teeth were much larger and its pelvis much wider than those of modern humans, but its fingers were similar to ours.
Although each of these species is unique, they were genetically similar enough to be able to mate, in the same way that horses and donkeys can mate to form a mule.
Dude, they did it. Today you can find some humans who have between one and four percent Neanderthal DNA and between four and six percent Denisovan DNA, according to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.
