(CN) --- Researchers believe they have discovered a new human species that could reshape the way scientists understand the history of human evolution.
According to a trio of new research papers, a skull fossil known as the Harbin cranium belongs to a new species of humans named Homo longi, also referred to as “Dragon Man,” named for the Dragon River area of China where it was found.
These findings were published Friday in the journal The Innovation, and detail how this ancient skull sheds enormous light on the evolutionary path of humans.
"The Harbin fossil is one of the most complete human cranial fossils in the world," said Qiang Ji, a professor of paleontology of Hebei GEO University who authored one of the papers. "This fossil preserved many morphological details that are critical for understanding the evolution of the Homo genus and the origin of Homo sapiens."
Ji’s paper was published alongside two others, one authored by Xijun Ni, a professor of primatology and paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Hebei GEO University, and the other by Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist for the Natural History Museum of London.
Together, the findings suggest the fossil was found in the 1930s in Harbin City, located in the Heilongjiang province of China. The fossil is very large and could hold a brain the size of a modern human.
However, the skull differs from that of a modern human head in other ways. Namely, the Harbin fossil has larger, almost square socketed eyes, and a wide mouth containing large teeth.
"While it shows typical archaic human features, the Harbin cranium presents a mosaic combination of primitive and derived characters setting itself apart from all the other previously-named Homo species," Ji said.
The researchers used a series of geochemical analyses to place an age on the fossil, which they believe is at least 146,000 years old. Using its age and features, the researchers believe that Homo longi would be a closer relative to Homo sapiens than the Neanderthals.
"It is widely believed that the Neanderthal belongs to an extinct lineage that is the closest relative of our own species. However, our discovery suggests that the new lineage we identified that includes Homo longi is the actual sister group of H. sapiens," says Ni.
If accurate, this addition to the human lineage would reshape how scientists view our ancestor species. This jumbling of the human lineage suggests that the common ancestry modern humans share with Neanderthals would have existed even further back in time.
"The divergence time between H. sapiens and the Neanderthals may be even deeper in evolutionary history than generally believed, over one million years," said Ni. “If true, we likely diverged from Neanderthals roughly 400,000 years earlier than scientists had thought.”
Besides placing Homo longi in an evolutionary timeline, the researchers were able to glean information from the fossil and provide details about what they think this human ancestor may have been like.
The findings suggest that Homo longi was a strong and robust human, with the Harbin fossil being from an adult male roughly 50 years old. The research also suggests that the fossil came from someone who would have lived in a forested, floodplain area, most likely as part of a small community.
The researchers also believe that Homo longi would have probably hunted mammals and birds and gathered fruits and vegetables much in the same manner as Homo sapiens.
Also, given the new timeline, this newly discovered ancestor may have interacted with Homo sapiens and could have been instrumental in shaping the history of modern humans.
This is because researchers have seen multiple human lineages of different Homo species co-existing in Asia, Africa and Europe all at the same time, which would have allowed for potential interactions between the different lineages.
"Altogether, the Harbin cranium provides more evidence for us to understand Homo diversity and evolutionary relationships among these diverse Homo species and populations," Ni said. "We found our long-lost sister lineage."
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