‘Dragon Man’ Skull Discovery in China Tells Story of Unknown Human Ancestor
For 85 years, the human skull lay in an abandoned well in the northern Chinese city of Harbin. A farmer concealed the relic there in 1933 like an heirloom, so invading Japanese soldiers couldn’t seize it as war booty. The farmer had been part of the labor crew who had unearthed it while digging foundations for a bridge over the Songhua River.
From his deathbed, the farmer revealed the secret to his grandchildren, who retrieved the prehistoric skull in 2018 and donated it to a university near Beijing. On Friday, an international research team announced in a study published in the journal Innovation that the fossilized cranium—the largest and most complete of its kind—belonged to a previously unknown species that may be modern humans’ closest relative.
If the conclusions of the study—one of three new ones spotlighting the complexity of human beginnings—are accurate, decades of thought about human evolution have been upended.
