This, along with other genomic analyses, suggests that the Neanderthals and Denisovans split very early on in Europe. DNA from this specimen’s cell nuclei looks Neanderthal, but its mitochondrial DNA looks Denisovan.
The oldest evidence of Denisovans was discovered in Spain, in the genome of a hominin specimen at Sima de los Huesos, dating back to 430,000 years ago. The Denisovans are a sister lineage to the Neanderthals, which we only really know about from genomic data. To me, one thing that’s really fascinating about this skull is that the researchers also talked about its similarity to a mandible-known as the Xiahe specimen-that has been argued to be from a Denisovan. My expertise is more in paleogenomics, or using genetic analysis of the fossil record to infer characteristics and lineage of human ancestors. Their analysis is interesting-it’s definitely adding more to our knowledge of the region and of human evolutionary history. The researchers who analyzed the skull believe it is one of the earliest humans. So these findings are really, really exciting. The fossil record for East Asia during Dragon Man’s time has long been a mystery for Western academics, not readily accessible to the rest of the world.
Schmitt: East Asian paleoanthropology was set back during World War II, during which time a lot of specimens were either lost or destroyed. Q &A With Christopher Schmitt The Brink: What makes the discovery of Dragon Man so interesting? How will the discovery of Dragon Man help us better understand human evolutionary history? What was his life like? And why are there so few human fossils from his time and region of the world? The Brink asked Christopher Schmitt, a Boston University College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of anthropology and biology, and an expert in evolutionary biology and paleogenomics, to walk us through the significance of Dragon Man. The researchers who first analyzed and described the new specimen in three papers published in Cell have named its species Homo longi, nicknamed “Dragon Man,” for the region of northeastern China where it was found. Instead of telling Japanese officials about the skull, the laborer tucked it safely away, never speaking of it until divulging the secret to his family shortly before his death in 2018. The large, long skull, belonging to an adult male with a robust brow line, had been hidden in a well by a Chinese man who found it in 1933 while doing construction work under occupation by the Japanese. The massive fossilized cranium provides tantalizing clues into what humans looked like at that time, a period in East Asia in which there has been a gap in the human fossil record. The latest discovery, announced in June, was a skull found near China’s Dragon River that dates back to more than 140,000 years ago. Will we learn more about how we came to be and who we are today, or what life was like for those who lived thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years ago? Every so often, the fossilized discovery of a previously unknown human ancestor sends ripples around the world, as anthropologists and the public are mesmerized by a new window into the story of us.
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