ABOVE: An artist’s rendering of the Dragon Man, Homo longi, a proposed new species found in China
CHUANG ZHAO
A trio of papers, published today (June 25) in The Innovation, makes the case for a new species of Homo, H. longi, or the “Dragon Man,” that would replace Neanderthals as modern humans’ closest relative.
The single cranium used to describe the species—the largest of any hominin and remarkably well-preserved for being at least 146,000 years old—has a murky history that some experts say limits what conclusions can be drawn about it, but it does add to anthropologists’ understanding of human evolution in Asia during the latter half of the middle Pleistocene, an important period in human expansion.
“We got such an amazing, complete cranium, and it provided very important information for us to understand the evolution of Homo as a genus,” says Xijun Ni, a paleoanthropologist at the Chinese Academy of ...
