The discovery of a new species of ancient humans dubbed Homo longi, or “Dragon Man” forced scientists to rethink evolution. The well-preserved “Dragon man” skull recovered from a well in China revealed a new branch of family tree more closely related to modern humans than Neanderthals. What is equally fascinating is the backstory of the fossil. According to the researchers, the skull was originally found in 1933 by Chinese labourers who were building a bridge over the Songhua River in Harbin, in the Heilongjiang province. The country was occupied by the Japanese then. To keep the skull from getting into Japanese hands, it was wrapped and hidden in an abandoned well, resurfacing only in 2018 after the man who hid it told his grandson about it shortly before he died. The researchers dated the fossil to at least 146,000 years, placing it in the Middle Pleistocene, a dynamic era of human species migration. They suggested that Homo longi and Homo sapiens could have encountered each other during this era.
“Dragon Man” probably lived in a forested floodplain area as part of a small community. Researchers believe H longi may have been well adapted for harsh environments and would have been able to disperse throughout Asia based on the location where the skull was found as well as the large-sized man it points to.
“This population would have been hunter-gatherers, living off the land. From the winter temperatures in Harbin today, it looks like they were coping with even harsher cold than the Neanderthals,” co-author Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum, London told AFP.
The researchers have said that Homo longi, and not the Neanderthals, were the extinct human species most closely related to our own kind. But a number of experts do not agree that Dragon Man is a separate species but many think that the find could help scientists reconstruct the human family tree and find how modern humans emerged.
Credit : Hindustan Times
Picture Credit : Google
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