New link in human evolution: The Yunxian Man discovery

In 1989 and 1990, two million-year-old skulls were discovered in the Yunyang district of Hubei province in central China. These skulls belonged to unknown representatives of humanity. A third similar skull was found nearby in 2022. Its origin also remained unclear. Questions about whether the skulls belonged to Homo erectus, early Homo sapiens, or could be linked to the mysterious Asian "Dragon Man" puzzled scientists. However, new research sheds a bit more light on the discoveries.

The research team presented a thesis in a new, yet-to-be-reviewed paper, suggesting that one of the discovered skulls, which they managed to reconstruct, might be close to the last common ancestor of Homo sapiens and the Dragon Man lineage, informs IFLScience. The site also reminds us that Dragon Man, otherwise known as Homo longi, is an extinct species of archaic human. Its well-preserved skull, 146,000 years old, was discovered in Heilongjiang province, China, in 1933.

Scientists believe that Dragon Man is more closely related to Homo sapiens than to Neanderthals. They think it is possible that he was one of the Denisovans — the mysterious, extinct "brothers" of Homo sapiens, who once lived in Eurasia. Despite the uncertainty about his exact place in the Homo family tree, researchers in the new study suggested an unusual link between him and the three skulls found in Yunyang, named "Yunxian Man."

According to IFLScience, researchers reconstructed the Yunxian Man's skull, primarily based on the better-preserved specimen (Yunxian 2), and compared the shape of the reconstructed skull with other members of the Homo family. It was noted that the Yunxian skull possessed a mosaic of features, many indicating that it might have belonged to an early representative of the Dragon Man lineage. The findings suggest that Yunxian Man, dated 940,000 to 1.1 million years ago, may be the last common ancestor of modern humans and the mysterious Dragon Man from East Asia.

Researchers believe that morphologically and chronologically, Yunxian Man is close to the last common ancestor of the Homo sapiens and Dragon Man lineages. This discovery, published on the bioRxiv preprint server, opens new perspectives on understanding the process of human evolution, shedding light on its complex history. Undoubtedly, future studies will establish a more precise place for Yunxian Man in the human family tree, providing more information about our ancestors and their evolutionary puzzles.