Mark Maslin, a professor of earth system science at UCL and the author of The Cradle of Humanity, said: “The beautifully preserved Chinese Harbin archaic human skull adds even more evidence that human evolution was not a simple evolutionary tree but a dense intertwined bush. “What we are repeatedly finding is that the differences in looks didn’t mean much to these ancient people when it comes to breeding.” “I think it’s a bad moment in science to be naming new species among these large-brained humans that all interbred with each other,” he said. The skull being Denisovan was a good hypothesis, he added, though he was less keen on a new species name. Prof John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the idea of a new lineage of humans was “a provocative claim”, because skulls can look similar even among distant relatives. 'Dragon Man': reconstruction shows skull of humans' closest cousin – video What we need is much more complete skeletal material of the Denisovans alongside DNA,” Stringer said. “Certainly this specimen could be Denisovan but we have to be cautious. Whatever the name, one possibility is that the Harbin skull is Denisovan, a mysterious group of extinct humans known largely from DNA and bone fragments recovered from Siberia. “The important thing is the third lineage of later humans that are separate from Neanderthals and separate from Homo sapiens.” Details are published in three papers in The Innovation. “I prefer to call it Homo daliensis, but it’s not a big deal,” he said. He believes it is similar to another found in Dali county in China in 1978. The Chinese researchers believe the Harbin skull is distinct enough to make it a new species, but Stringer is not convinced. To their surprise, the Harbin skull and a handful of others from China formed a new branch closer to modern humans than Neanderthals. To work out where the Harbin individual fitted into human history, the scientists fed measurements from the fossil and 95 other skulls into software that compiled the most likely family tree. “It is hard to estimate the height, but the massive head should match a height higher than the average of modern humans.” “Homo longi is heavily built, very robust,” said Prof Xijun Ni, a paleoanthropologist at Hebei. His wide, bulbous nose allowed him to breathe huge volumes of air, indicating a high-energy lifestyle, while sheer size would have helped him withstand the brutally cold winters in the region. The researchers believe the skull belonged to a male, about 50 years old, who would have been an impressive physical specimen. “This guy had a huge head,” said Stringer. Beneath the thick brow ridge, the face has large square eye sockets, but is delicate despite its size. The skull, which is 23cm long and more than 15cm wide, is substantially larger than a modern human’s and has ample room, at 1,420ml, for a modern human brain. The skull has a unique combination of primitive and more modern features, with the face, in particular, more closely resembling Homo sapiens. Photograph: Chuang ZhaoĪn international team led by Prof Qiang Ji at the Hebei Geo University in China drew on geochemical techniques to narrow down when the skull came to rest in Harbin, dating the bones to at least 146,000 years old.
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