LOOKING AN ANCIENT HUMAN COUSIN IN THE FACE

A fossilized skull found and hidden away in China during the late 1930s has ignited debate among archeologists. 
The skull has a brain case as big as modern humans, but also huge eye sockets, heavy brow ridges, and an enormous molar. 
When the skull was recently delivered to scientists, those who first examined it named it “homo longi,” or Dragon Man, after the Dragon River region where it was found, and declared it to be a previously unknown species of hominid.
Others, using the profession’s high-tech scientific tools, argue that we’re looking at the first skull ever found from a Denisovan – an elusive human cousin closely related to Neanderthals who died out more than 30,000 years ago.
Denisovans derive their name from Siberia’s Denisova Cave, where their remains were first found. The remnants collected so far amount to only a finger bone, a piece of a cranium, a couple of jawbones, and some teeth, including an outsize molar.
Using radioactive isotopes encrusted in the Dragon Man’s skull, researchers dated the find to somewhere between 146,000 and 309,000 years old, well within the Denisovans’ timespan.
Next, researchers used computational statistics to catalog more than 600 traits of the skull, including dimensions, volume, brow size, and dental characteristics. Then they compared 55 of the skull’s traits to those of 95 other hominid skulls.
The Dragon Man most closely resembled skulls dated to 130,000 to 789,000 years old and showed particular affinity in its proteins to a jawbone found in a Chinese cave where ancient DNA suggests Denisovans lived from 280,000 to 55,000 years ago.
Denisovans’ DNA shows them more closely related to Neanderthals than to us; however, the anatomy of Dragon Man’s skull shows it to be more similar to the headbone of homo sapiens than Neanderthals.
The Chinese scientists in possession of the skull have been reluctant to destroy portions of the bone or tooth to extract proteins or DNA that could settle the controversy.
Meanwhile, a similar puzzle has arisen in Israel.
A fossilized skull recently unearthed there could be the earliest known Neanderthal found in the region, the first fossil ever found of an archaic hominid ancestor, an individual of mixed Neanderthal and human parentage.
The skull dates between 120,000 to 140,000 years ago, about twice as old as any previous remains of Neanderthals unearthed in the area. It was found with stone tools made by a method used by both Neanderthals and modern humans.
The fossil sports the heavy jaw and big molar characteristic of a Neanderthal but shows thicker bones along the sides and back of the skull, which more closely resemble ancient hominids predating both Neanderthals and homo sapiens.
Researchers who have studied the skull theorize that it’s either a previously unknown strain of Neanderthal, a late survivor of a hominid species predating Neanderthals, or perhaps an individual of mixed ancestry.
TRENDPOST: As yet, there is little basis to declare Dragon Man a previously unknown species. More research will likely end the debate. However, even if Dragon Man is “merely” a Denisovan, he gives us our first face-to-face look at a vanished human cousin.
More broadly, the two “mystery skulls” remind us of a broader question: with so many versions of genus homo – Neanderthals, Denisovans, homo sapiens, possibly others – alive at the same time, why was homo sapiens – us – the sole survivor?

Dragon Man, possibly a new homo species or the first skull found of a Denisovan. Photo credit: Xijun Ni, Hebei GEO University