What do we know about the dragon man
The dragon man (Homo longi) is an extinct species of man, he was identified by
The skull was discovered in 1933 near a building under constructionbridge of the National Railway of Manchukuo and studied by paleoanthropologists in 2018. These scientists believed that modern humans are more closely related to Homo longi than to European Neanderthals, which may force a reconsideration of the current scientific consensus.
Homolongi is anatomically similar to other Middle Pleistocene specimens and could potentially be a member of the Denisovans, although this has not been confirmed.
Like other ancient people, he has a low anda long skull with strongly swollen brow ridges, wide eye sockets and a large mouth. The skull is the longest ever found of any human species. Like modern people, the face is flat, but the nose is large. The volume of the brain was 1420 cubic meters. cm, within the range of modern humans and Neanderthals. Most likely, the skin, hair and eyes were dark, like Neanderthals, Denisovans and early sapiens.
How a new extinct species was found
The human remains were found by a local worker on the banks of the Songhua River in 1933, when he was building a bridge, and then hid it from the authorities in an abandoned well.
Before his death, relatives learned about the skull in2018. Later that year, Chinese paleoanthropologist Ji Qiang convinced the family to donate it for study at Hebei Geographical University, where it has been preserved ever since.
Will reward the dragon-man representative
Due to the skull's long history, its exact origin, and hence its stratigraphic context and age, were difficult to determine.
In 2021, Chinese geologist Shao Qingfeng and hiscolleagues conducted X-ray fluorescence, rare earth and strontium isotope analysis on the skull and various other mammal fossils found around the Dongjiang Bridge and determined that all fossils from the surrounding area were likely deposited around the same time and in the same area. same region, they are from 309 to 138 thousand years old.
Classification of a new species
In two simultaneously published papers, Gee and his colleagues announced that the skull represented a new species, which they named Homo longi.
Based on the enormous size of the molars,They suggested that H. longi is most closely related to, and possibly the same species as, the Xiahe mandible from Tibet: the latter remains were attributed to the enigmatic Denisovans who were dispersed throughout East Asia in the Middle and Late Pleistocene.
Therefore, the authors believe that Asian samplesthe Middle Pleistocene are more closely related to modern humans (H. sapiens) than European Neanderthals, although nuclear DNA and ancient protein analysis place the Xiahe and Denisovans mandible closer to Neanderthals than to modern humans.
Skull of Harbin
Dragon Human Anatomy
The proposed new species has a low and longskull, receding forehead, wide upper face, large nose (possibly adapting to cold air), large square eye sockets and thick brow ridges, flat cheekbones, wide palate, large dental cavities (equated to a large mouth), and a wide base of the skull.
The dimensions of the Harbin skull are 221.3 mm × 164.1 mm. For comparison, the dimensions of the modern human skull are on average 176 mm × 145 mm for men and 171 mm × 140 mm for women.
How the Dragon Man changed scientists' understanding of the origins of Homo sapiens
Some consider the earliest people in Chinatransitional from Homo erectus to the Asian line with modern anatomy. The authors of the work about Homo longi have a different opinion: the dragon man is an independent branch that arose in Africa about a million years ago.
According to calculations, Homo sapiens lived on the territory of China 400 thousand years ago. This contradicts the results obtained earlier.
In addition, in Israel in the Nesher Ramla cavefound several fragments of a skull 140-120 thousand years old. They combine archaic and advanced Neanderthal traits, so scientists consider them to be a special ancestral line of this species of people.
And given the common details with two more types of people,suggests a hypothesis about a special line of Neanderthal ancestors, which separated about 400 thousand years ago and ended its existence in Nesher Ramla. At the same time, to the north of them, the Sapiens already settled in the caves.
Conclusion
the last 200 thousand years, the planet has been inhabited by many populations of ancient people, including Homo sapiens. They migrated actively, exchanged technologies, and possibly interbred.
Read more:
Changes in the Earth's orbit contributed to the emergence of complex life on the planet
Nebulae, comets and stellar nurseries: showing the best astrophotography of the year
Coronavirus in a cave: all about Chinese miners who suffered from strange pneumonia in 2012