A brand-new types of ancient human called Homo longi, or “Dragon Man,” might possibly alter the method we comprehend human development, researchers stated Friday.
Researchers stated in their findings, released Friday as 3 different documents in the journal The Innovation, that Homo longi might change Neanderthals as the closest relative to our own types, Homo sapiens. The discovery of the brand-new types is linked to a skull called the Harbin cranium, a fossil idea to have actually been found years ago however just just recently studied.
“It is widely believed that the Neanderthal belongs to an extinct lineage that is the closest relative of our own species,” Xijun Ni, a teacher of primatology and paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Hebei GEO University, and author of 2 of the documents, informed The Associated Press.
“However, our discovery suggests that the new lineage we identified that includes Homo longi is the actual sister group of Homo sapiens.”
The Harbin cranium “likewise reveals other functions resembling our types,” Chris Stringer, another of the authors, stated in a press release about the findings from London’s Natural History Museum, where he works as a research study leader.
“It has flat and low cheekbones with a shallow canine fossa, and the face looks minimized and tucked under the brain case,” he included.
The name “Dragon Man” is originated from the geographical name Long Jiang, which is typically utilized for the Heilongjiang province and actually indicates “dragon river,” according to the research study performed by a worldwide group and led by Qiang Ji, a teacher at Hebei Geo University in China.
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It included that the skull, which has to do with 9 inches long and more than 6 inches broad, is huge enough to hold a brain that is comparable in size to that of a contemporary human — around 3 pounds (1,420ml) in brain volume. Researchers think it came from a male, aged about 50.
The cranium is believed to have actually been found in 1933 when a bridge was constructed over the Songhua River in Harbin City, in China’s Heilongjiang province, the research study stated, including that details about the specific website was lost since of its “long and baffled history.”
Junyi Ge, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and among the research study’s employee, stated they were “quite confident” that it was more than 146,000 years of ages.
Although it has actually been explained by the research study group as a brand-new types, in a different interview with the U.K.’s Press Association, Stringer stated he concurred that the skull bore a similarity to another fossil coming from Homo daliensis, another kind of ancient human.
“Regardless of that, the morphology of the fossil is extremely useful about later on human development,” he included.
The findings were revealed hours after researchers stated they had actually found a brand-new sort of early human after studying pieces of fossilized bone collected at a website utilized by a cement plant in main Israel.
Nesher Ramla Homo — called after the location southeast of Tel Aviv where it was discovered — might have lived together with our types, Homo sapiens, for more than 100,000 years, and might have even interbred, scientists stated.
