Latest news with #Homolongi
New York Post
a day ago
- Science
- New York Post
Fossilized ‘Dragon Man' skull clears up baffling ‘mystery' behind early humans: scientists
A skull, unearthed nearly a century ago, has led to new revelations in the study of human evolution. Known as 'Dragon Man,' the fossil has now been identified as belonging to the Denisovans — a mysterious group of ancient humans whose existence was first revealed through DNA analysis in 2010. The 'Dragon Man' belongs to the Denisovans — a mysterious group of ancient humans. Hebei GEO University Advertisement 'I really feel that we have cleared up some of the mystery surrounding this population,' Qiaomei Fu, a researcher who was a part of the 2010 discovery team and led the new study, told CNN. 'After 15 years, we know the first Denisovan skull.' The findings also provide a glimpse into what the Denisovans may have looked like. Scientists have reconstructed an artist's impression of 'Dragon Man,' showing a robust, blocky face with strong brow ridges, a feature common in other ancient human species. Advertisement With a brain size comparable to both Neanderthals and modern humans, Denisovans would have had a physically powerful appearance, likely adapted to the harsh environments they inhabited. The 'Dragon Man' skull, which dates to 146,000 years ago and was discovered in 1933 by a laborer in Harbin City, China — when it was under Japanese occupation — was long shrouded in mystery. The worker had found the cranium while building a bridge, but rather than handing it over to science, he stashed it at the bottom of a well, where it remained untouched for decades until his death in 2018. His family then donated it to Hebei GEO University, CNN reported. The 'Dragon' Man skull, which was discovered in 1933 by a laborer in Harbin City, China, was long shrouded in mystery. Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Advertisement With the discovery of this nearly complete skull, scientists have finally pieced together a face for the Denisovans, offering new insights into the history of humanity. In 2021, scientists first proposed that the skull might belong to a new species of human, naming it Homo longi, or 'Dragon Man,' which is derived from Heilongjiang, or Black Dragon River, the province where the it was found. The skull's unusual features — such as its massive brow ridges and broad, low face—were unlike those of any previously known human species. However, as exciting as this discovery was, it raised many questions. Advertisement The mystery deepened as researchers struggled to extract DNA from the skull, which had been buried for so long. Despite several attempts, initial efforts to analyze its genetic material proved unsuccessful. It wasn't until scientists turned to a different source — dental plaque — that they found the breakthrough they needed. The DNA pointed to a surprising connection to the Denisovans, an ancient human group that had been identified through a tiny pinky bone found in a Siberian cave over a decade ago. The discovery of this fossil marked the first evidence of Denisovans outside of their original home in Siberia. Until now, no complete Denisovan skull had ever been found, leaving researchers with only small pieces of the puzzle to work with. The 'Dragon Man' skull changes that, providing a much-needed clue to help scientists piece together what these ancient relatives might have looked like. The new research, published in two groundbreaking papers in Cell and Science, not only provided mitochondrial DNA evidence but also revealed protein fragments extracted from the skull that further cemented its Denisovan identity. The analysis of these proteins showed a clear match to known Denisovan traits, confirming the connection beyond doubt. The 'Dragon Man' discovery adds a new layer to our understanding of human evolution, shedding light on a period when multiple human species roamed the Earth. Denisovans, Neanderthals, and early Homo sapiens coexisted and even interbred, leaving behind traces of their DNA in modern humans. In fact, many people today carry small amounts of Denisovan DNA, a legacy of these ancient encounters.
The Irish Sun
a day ago
- Science
- The Irish Sun
Haunting ‘Dragon Man' skull is first ever found from lost human cousin ‘Denisovan' species that lived 217,000 years ago
THE face of humans' most mysterious ancestor has finally been uncovered after 217,000 years. The discovery proves that the 'Dragon Man' of China is indeed a Denisovan, a long lost ancestral species. Advertisement 4 The fossil, which is at least 146,000 years old, reveals Denisovan's had a prominent brow ridge and a brain as large as modern humans and Neanderthals Credit: Xijun Ni It is the first time a near-complete skull has been definitively linked to the extinct people. The fossil, which is at least 146,000 years old, reveals Denisovans had a prominent brow ridge and a brain as large as modern humans and Neanderthals. They even had more modern features, like delicate cheekbones. Their relatively flat lower face doesn't jut out like it does in other primates and more ancient hominins. Advertisement READ MORE ON ARCHAEOLOGY The massive size of the skull also suggests a very large body, which could have helped it survive brutal winters in northeastern China. "Having a well-preserved skull like this one allows us to compare the Denisovans to many more different specimens found in very different places," paleoanthropologist Bence Viola of the University of Toronto, who was not involved in the new study, told " This means we might be able to compare their body proportions and start thinking about their adaptations to climate, for example." Scientists have long speculated about the appearance of the mysterious Denisovans. Advertisement Most read in Science Exclusive Exclusive Other bones relating to the ancient ancestor have been discovered over the decades, such as a But none more intact than the 'Dragon Man' or 'Harbin skull'. Face of oldest direct human ancestor, which lived 3.8million years ago, revealed by scientists A finger bone found in Denisova Cave, Siberia, in 2010 was the first example of the elusive Denisovans - and where they got their unofficial name. "It's really exciting to finally have Denisovan DNA from a nearly complete cranium," Janet Kelso, a computational biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, told Advertisement "We finally have some insights into the cranial morphology of the Denisovans." 4 Other bones relating to the ancient ancestor have been discovered over the decades, such as a robust jawbone found off the coast of Taiwan in the 2000s which was recently attributed to the Denisovans Credit: Yousuke Kaifu In 2021, a team of Chinese researchers made the controversial claim that a bizarre skull they had found could belong to a previously unknown species. They dubbed this unknown species Homo longi, nicknamed 'Dragon Man', inspired by the Long Jiang Dragon River region where the skull was found. Advertisement The fossil is believed to have been hidden by a Chinese labourer for 85 years, before the man's grandson handed the specimen to Qiang Ji, a palaeontologist at Hebei GEO University in Shijiazhuang in 2018. Ji, who co-authored the original Homo longi paper, suspects the man discovered the artefact himself but failed to report it to authorities. The grandson claimed the fossil was unearthed the fossil in 1933 during bridge-construction work over the Long Jiang river. The construction worker then supposedly buried it in an abandoned well, where it remained until a deathbed confession. Advertisement When Ji published his findings in 2021, Qiaomei Fu of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing - who worked on the very first Denisovan DNA from the Siberian finger bone - wanted to see if they shared any ancient molecules. Ji and Fu's team first attempted to extract ancient DNA from a part of the skull called the petrous bone in the inner ear - where DNA might survive after 146,000 years - and from an attached tooth. They didn't recover any genetic material. But what they did find was sequence fragments from 95 ancient proteins from the petrous samples. Advertisement One protein sequence from the Dragon Man fossil was identical to that of a protein from the Siberian finger bone, as well as Denisovan bones from Tibet and Taiwan, the experts reveal in two papers published in the journals and this week . This protein sequence differed from modern humans and Neanderthals - suggesting the man was likely a Denisovan. "After 15 years, we give the Denisovan a face," said Fu. "It's really a special feeling, I feel really happy." It is understood the new species will adopt the Homo longi name, like we humans are Homo sapiens. Advertisement 4 The massive size of the skull also suggests a very large body, which could have helped it survive brutal winters in northeastern China Credit: Chuang Zhao 4 It is understood the new species will adopt the Homo longi name, like we humans are Homo sapiens Credit: John Bavaro Fine Art / Science Photo Library
National Geographic
2 days ago
- Science
- National Geographic
Scientists discovered a new kind of human with its pinkie bone. Now we have a skull.
Finally, we can put a face on a Denisovan. The "Dragon Man" skull was discovered in Harbin, China in 1933 by a local laborer, but remained hidden away until 2018. A new analysis now finds its very likely to be a Denisovan. In the summer of 2021, a team of five Chinese researchers stirred up some controversy by suggesting that an unusual skull unearthed in northeastern China belonged to a previously unknown species they thereby officially described as Homo longi, nicknamed 'Dragon Man.' (Both names were inspired by the Long Jiang Dragon River region where it was found.) Soon afterwards, the team was contacted by paleogeneticist Qiaomei Fu of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, who asked if she could try and get DNA from the skull. Back in 2010, she'd been the first to investigate the DNA from a tiny finger bone found in a Siberian cave called Denisova that became world famous because it revealed the existence of a population of hominins not previously known to science, and for which no other fossils existed: the Denisovans. In two papers published in the journals Science and Cell this week—coauthored with Qiang Ji of Hebei GEO University, an author on the original Homo longi paper—Fu and her team conclude the 'Dragon Man' was likely a Denisovan too. Which is big news, as it makes the stunningly complete skull of 'Dragon Man', also known as the 'Harbin skull', the only Denisovan skull known to science. 'After 15 years, we give the Denisovan a face,' she says. 'It's really a special feeling, I feel really happy.' This illustration depicts how Homo longi may have appeared when they lived during the middle Pleistocene, over 146,000 years ago. Illustration by John Bavaro Fine Art, Science Photo Library We now know Denisovans had a wide and low face that combined more primitive features, like a prominent brow ridge, with more modern ones, like delicate cheekbones and a relatively flat lower face that does not jut out like it does in other primates and more ancient hominins. Its massive size also suggests a very large body that perhaps helped protect it from brutal winters in northeastern China. The findings open the door to a better understanding of these ancient hominins and the world they inhabited. 'Having a well-preserved skull like this one allows us to compare the Denisovans to many more different specimens found in very different places,' says paleoanthropologist Bence Viola of the University of Toronto, who was not involved in the new study. 'This means we might be able to compare their body proportions and start thinking about their adaptations to climate, for example.' How dental plaque helped confirm the findings Bulgaria's cultural capital After she was granted access to the skull, the first thing Fu did was look for DNA, specifically in the teeth and the petrous bone, a dense part of the skull near the inner ear that is known to be the last spot where DNA might survive in a skull that is estimated to be at least 146,000 years old. When that revealed no genetic material, she turned to a different method: extracting proteins. These are usually more hardy than DNA – and because they are what the genes in the DNA code for, they can also provide genetic clues about the DNA that gave rise to them. She was able to collect information from 95 different proteins, four of which are known to differ between Denisovans and other hominins. For three of those, the skull had a Denisovan variant (sometimes in combination with another one on the other chromosome). Yet Fu still wanted to find DNA to confirm if the skull belonged to a Denisovan. And so she looked in the dental plaque on its single remaining tooth. It was a long shot: while plaque is a very hardy material, researchers more typically find bacterial DNA in it. It's rarer to find the DNA of the owner of the teeth. Against expectations, she did find a tiny amount of DNA there that was human and looked sufficiently old to have belonged to the skull itself, and not one of the people who have handled it since. (How a molar, jawbone, and pinkie are rewriting human history) 'They may have actually recovered many DNA fragments from me because I studied and handled the specimens so many times,' says paleoanthropologist Xijun Ni, who is based at the same institute and was one of the coauthors of the paper proposing Homo longi as a new species, but was not a coauthor on the current paper. (He is not convinced that the protein analysis is sufficiently specific, nor does he believe the degraded DNA is enough to identify the specimen as Denisovan.) Fu acknowledges in the paper 'a substantial proportion' of the DNA she found was clearly the result of contamination. But using the established protocols to select only the DNA that is indeed ancient, she found that the tiny amount of DNA that remains, like the proteins, confidently identifies the skull as Denisovan 'It contains 27 gene variants only found in the seven known Denisovan individuals,' says Fu. 'None of these can arise from modern human contamination.' 'The data are quite convincing,' says paleobiologist Frido Welker of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, who specializes in the analysis of ancient proteins, but wasn't involved in this study. 'The Harbin cranium appears to be a Denisovan.' Other researchers are convinced as well. Since the description of [the Harbin skull] I was hopeful that we finally had a face for the Denisovans, and these papers prove it,' says Viola who has conducted excavations in Denisova cave. 'It's great that two different methods gave us the same result, this makes me much more confident that this is real.' Denisovans inhabited an even wider range than we thought These results provoke an unsettled question: Since Denisovans have never been formally described as a species, but Homo longi has, should we now refer to Denisovans as Homo longi? For some, the answer is clearly yes. 'Assuming the author's claim is true, then Denisovans are a population of Homo longi, just as New Yorkers and Beijingers are both Homo sapiens' says Ni. Paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, who has been collaborating with Ni and others on a new analysis of Chinese hominin fossils, agrees that even though 'it is increasingly likely that Harbin is the most complete fossil of a Denisovan found so far, Homo longi is the appropriate species name for this group.' But other researchers don't think it's useful to assign separate species names to hominins from this period. 'We ourselves do not use species names for Neandertals or Denisovans,' says paleogeneticist Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthrology, who leads the lab where Fu first analyzed the Denisovan DNA. 'We do not find it helpful as these are closely related groups that have been shown to mix and have fertile offspring, with each other and with our own direct ancestors. But if a species name is needed, we would simply call them all Homo sapiens.' (The best evidence yet that Roman gladiators fought lions: a bite mark) Naming discussions aside, a very exciting discovery remains: a kind of human we once only knew from a pinky bone dug up from a cave now has a face. And we now know this kind of human did not just live in Siberia where the first pinkie bone was found, but across much of East-Asia. Confidently identifying this fossil will also help researchers make sense of the many other mysterious fossils found across East-Asia, and will encourage them to try and get molecular evidence from those as well. This may also cast a new light on how and when Denisovans and our own ancestors interbred, which is why long after the death of the last direct descendant of the Denisovan 'Dragon Man', some of its genetic material still survives in people alive today.
The Guardian
10-04-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Jawbone fossil builds richer image of ancient Denisovans
An ancient jawbone dredged from the Taiwanese seabed has revealed new insights into the appearance and sweeping geographic range of an enigmatic human species called the Denisovans. The fossil was discovered by fishers trawling the Penghu Channel off Taiwan and is thought to be the most complete fossil that has been genetically identified as Denisovan. The male individual, who lived at least 10,000 years ago, had a strong jaw and very large, powerful molars. 'From a tooth or a small bone fragment, there's the mystery of their appearance,' said Prof Enrico Cappellini, of the University of Copenhagen, a co-senior author on the paper. A Denisovan jaw discovered in Tibet had begun to fill in this picture, and the latest discovery adds to the evidence of a prominent jaw with huge teeth. 'Now we have a richer image,' Cappellini said. 'Of course it would be good to have a skull and the rest of the skeleton, but it's a step forward.' The fossil has been dated to one of two glacial periods when the channel is known to have been above sea level, either between 10,000 and 70,000 years ago or between 130,000 and 190,000 years ago. The scientists were not able to obtain DNA from the sample but managed to extract proteins, which could be sequenced and used to place the fossil confidently on the Denisovan branch of the evolutionary tree. The discovery reveals an impressive geographic range for the ancient species, which lived at the same time as – and interbred with – modern humans and Neanderthals. The first Denisovan fossils, identified through analysis of ancient DNA, came from a cave in Siberia and comprised just a finger fragment and a few teeth. Since then, further discoveries show Denisovans also weathered the incredibly harsh conditions of the high-altitude Tibetan plateau, where temperatures can plunge to -30C. By contrast, in south-east Asia they would have lived alongside water buffaloes in a balmy climate. 'These are climate and environmental conditions that are quite different,' Cappellini said. 'The cold environment in Siberia, high altitude in Tibet. We cannot infer anything of their cognitive abilities … but they had an ability to adapt to environments that are quite diverse.' Prof Chris Stringer, a leader in human origins research at the Natural History Museum in London, who was not involved in the latest research, said the latest discovery also strengthened the case that Denisovans belong to a group called Homo longi, or dragon man, a complete skull of which was unearthed in Harbin in north-east China. 'It's now apparent that the Denisovans must have had a wider environmental range than the Neanderthals, from cold, open environments in northern Asia to subtropical woodlands in south-east Asia,' he said. 'A question for the future will be whether we end up calling Homo longi Denisovan or we end up calling Denisovans Homo longi.' The findings are published in the journal Science.
