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. Humans living at that time were likely to use tools, which means they probably had culture-to make tools you generally need to learn those skills socially and pass those skills on to others. Schmitt says, based on Dragon Man’s cranial size, there’s no reason to doubt the people he represents were any more or less intelligent than contemporary humans. Artist’s rendering of what Dragon Man’s face might have looked like. 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.

The missing link evolution