Latest news with #HomoLongi
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Science
- Yahoo
1930s 'Dragon Man' Finally Gives Elusive Ancient Human Species a Face
A 146,000-year-old skull known as the 'dragon man', thought to be the sole representative of an ancient human species, actually belongs to a larger group of our extinct relatives, the Denisovans, two new papers claim. It's the first skull we have from that group, and it was right under our noses for years. Paleontologist Qiaomei Fu, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, specializes in early modern human settlement in Asia. She led two new studies that reveal the mistaken identity of this skull, using proteins and mitochondrial DNA her team found preserved in the fossil. The 'dragon man' skull was discovered in the 1930s by a construction worker who was erecting a bridge over the Songhua River in Harbin, China, while the region was under Japanese occupation. The province is known as Longjiang, meaning 'dragon river', hence the skull's nickname. The bridge builder kept the specimen to himself, hiding it at the bottom of a well. It was only when his family donated it to Hebei GEO University in 2018 that research on this unique find began. In 2021, the skull was declared a new species of ancient human, Homo longi, but Fu's research rebukes this categorization. That initial description was based on comparative morphology, where paleontologists look at the physical appearance of different fossils to decide where they sit in the family tree. But morphology can mislead: members of the same species often look very different depending on lifestyle and environment. Trying to extract fragile molecular evidence from fossils – especially DNA to compare genetic similarity – is often a destructive and patchy task with no guarantee of payoff, but in this case, Fu and her colleagues had astonishing success. The team was able to retrieve proteins from the skull's petrous bone – one of the densest in the body. They also got hold of mitochondrial DNA (which contains less detail than the DNA stored in a cell nucleus, but is still very useful) from plaque on the dragon man's teeth. Dental plaque is not widely considered a source of DNA, perhaps because it's the result of a biofilm rather than a direct part of the host's body. "The finding that the human DNA of the Harbin specimen is better preserved in the dental calculus than in dense bones, including the petrous bone, suggests that dental calculus may be a valuable source for investigating DNA in Middle Pleistocene hominins," Fu and her team write. These molecules suggest the man is not as unique from other ancient humans as the skull's physical appearance suggests. That's partly because we don't actually have any other complete Denisovan skulls to refer to: until now, they were known only from teeth, one skull fragment, bits of jaw, and a few other body parts. But the dragon man's mitochondrial DNA reveals a species-level relationship to at least five other Denisovan individuals known from fossil remains found in Siberia. And among the amino acid fragments of 95 proteins found within his skull, four were unmistakably Denisovan, and three were direct matches. There are limitations to these sampling methods that leave some room for doubt, but Fu and team's findings are enough to place him among the Denisovans for now. We may have lost a species of ancient human – farewell Homo longi, it was good while it lasted – but it seems we've gained the first ever complete Denisovan skull. Which is pretty wild, given that this missing puzzle piece, a frustrating gap in the paleoanthropologists' catalogue, has actually been in the hands of modern humans for nearly 100 years. As they say, it's always in the last place you look. The research is published in Science and Cell. How Long Would Humans Survive Once The Last Baby Is Born? Humans Have Smoked Meat For Almost 2 Million Years, Study Suggests 'As If Time Froze': France's Deepest Shipwreck Stuns Archaeologists
BBC News
11 hours ago
- Science
- BBC News
Dragon Man: Ancient skull 'reveals what mysterious Denisovans looked like'
Scientists have linked genetic material extracted from an ancient skull found in China in 2018 to a mysterious group of early skull, nicknamed 'Dragon Man' had fascinated experts because it didn't seem to match any other prehistoric human. Now, an expert study says it has linked genetic material from the fossil with previous bones belonging to an group of prehistoric humans called Denisovans. Read on to find out more about Dragon Man, the Denisovans and how they made the discovery. Who is Dragon Man? The "Dragon Man" or Homo longi was the name given to the early relative whose fossilised skull was first given to experts in China in 2018, after reportedly being first discovered back in skull is thought to be around 146,000 years old and has been identified as a male of around 50 years finding was extra interesting to scientists who said they believed the Dragon Man was closer to modern humans than Neanderthals. Who are the Denisovans? Meanwhile Denisovans were a species of ancient humans, distinct from Neanderthals, another species of ancient are extinct relatives of modern humans who at one point lived alongside homo sapiens (humans like us). Denisovans are believed to have lived in Asia, 285 thousand to 25 thousand years ago. They were first identified from DNA taken from finger bone found in Siberia in then although other Denisovans have been identified, their appearance had remained a mystery. A team from the Institute of Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing worked on linking the Dragon Man fossil to the team failed to retrieve DNA from the skull's tooth and petrous bone, a section at the bottom of the skull which is usually a rich source of DNA in it was the hardened plaque on the teeth known as tartar which gave them results they could on this evidence, Denisovans can finally be would have had strong brow ridges, larger teeth than Neanderthals and modern humans, but brains around the same size. "I really feel that we have cleared up some of the mystery surrounding this population," said Qiaomei Fu, lead author of the new research. "After 15 years, we know the first Denisovan skull."It's hoped that this research could help identify Denisovan bones in other museum collections too.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Science
- Yahoo
1st-ever Denisovan skull identified thanks to DNA analysis
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Using cutting-edge DNA analysis, scientists have uncovered the true identity of an ancient human relative nicknamed the "Dragon Man." The mystery began with a giant, human-like skull discovered by a Chinese laborer in Harbin City, China, in 1933. In 2018, the man's family recovered the Harbin skull, which the laborer had buried in a well, and donated it to science. The enormous cranium features a long, low braincase and a massive brow ridge, along with a broad nose and big eyes. Based on the skull's unusual shape and size, experts gave it a new species name — Homo longi, or "Dragon Man" — in 2021. But in the past several years, there has been intense debate about whether Dragon Man, who lived at least 146,000 years ago, is a separate species. Instead, some researchers have claimed that the Dragon Man skull may be from a group of ancient humans called the Denisovans, since no Denisovan skull had ever been found. Now, in two studies published Wednesday (June 18) in the journals Science and Cell, researchers have proved that Dragon Man is indeed the face of Denisovans. Scientists first attempted to retrieve an ancient genome from the bones and teeth of the Harbin skull, without success. But they were able to recover some DNA from plaque that had hardened on the teeth and some information on proteins from an inner ear bone. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is passed from mother to child, recovered from the skull showed that Dragon Man was related to an early Denisovan group that lived in Siberia from around 217,000 to 106,000 years ago, which means that Denisovans inhabited a large geographical range in Asia, the researchers wrote in the Cell study. Additionally, the researchers investigated the skull's "proteome," the set of proteins and amino acids found in the skeleton. By comparing the proteome to those of contemporary humans, Neanderthals, Denisovans and nonhuman primates, the researchers found a clear connection between the Harbin cranium and early Denisovans, they wrote in the Science study. Related: 43,000-year-old human fingerprint is world's oldest — and made by a Neanderthal "We now have the first comprehensive morphological blueprint for Denisovan populations, helping to address an unresolved question that has persisted over the last decade on what Denisovans looked like," they wrote in the Science study. In short, Denisovans looked like Dragon Man. While the mystery of the enormous skull has been largely resolved, experts still need to discuss its assignment to the H. longi species. "This work makes it increasingly likely that Harbin is the most complete fossil of a Denisovan found so far," Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London who has worked on the Harbin cranium but was not involved in these new studies, told Live Science in an email. Stringer added that "Homo longi is the appropriate species name for this group," although at this point, the group is small. But Harbin's new identification as a Denisovan also requires experts to reconsider what they thought they knew about the evolution of humans in Asia, particularly in the Middle Pleistocene epoch, around 789,000 to 126,000 years ago. During this period, Eurasia was home to at least three different hominins — humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans — that frequently mated with one another, giving rise to the "muddle in the middle" nickname for this confusing period of evolution. RELATED STORIES —1.4 million-year-old jaw that was 'a bit weird for Homo' turns out to be from never-before-seen human relative —New, big-headed archaic humans discovered: Who is Homo juluensis? —In a 1st, ancient proteins reveal sex of human relative from 3.5 million years ago Until now, the Denisovan group of early humans has been known mostly from their DNA and a tiny handful of fossils. This is in stark contrast to Neanderthals, whose skulls have been found throughout Europe and Western Asia for more than 150 years. With the identification of the Harbin skull as Denisovan and the identification of a jawbone found off the coast of Taiwan as Denisovan in a study published in the journal Science in April, this means paleoanthropologists have definitive examples that other unknown skulls can be compared to. Studies of the size and shape of Middle Pleistocene fossil skulls will remain crucial for testing relationships, Stringer said, particularly because DNA does not preserve well in most fossils, and these studies are important for identifying what Denisovans actually looked like. But "there is certainly much more to come from extractions of ancient DNA and proteomes from human fossils," Stringer said.
