Is human evolution and its history about to be rewritten?
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For years, the history of human evolution has been widely observed and studied by scientists. The subject has often found itself changing recently and now there might be another twist in this long, complex story.
A recent discovery in a well in China could potentially suggest that another human species existed alongside Humans and Neanderthals, marking a potential breakthrough in our knowledge of later human species.
The skull was hidden in 1933, before being rediscovered in 2018. It had initially been concealed to keep it away from Japanese soldiers during their occupation of China.
Upon analysis of the skull, researchers determined that it was 146,000 years old.
While the researchers working on the skull believe this fossil represents an entirely new species of human, other researchers dispute this. They argue that the skull is of the same lineage of a previously discovered skull.
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Despite this dispute, researchers still maintain that this is an extremely important discovery in the landscape of tracking human evolutionary history.
This skull could help to validate the notion that there was another species of humanoid living at the same time as Neanderthals and Humans.
The description of the remains suggests that the specimen was likely quite large in size and likely lived a highly energetic lifestyle. This would make sense as typical hunter-gatherer species at the time were likely larger than modern humans.
Scientists are still keenly working on studying this specific fossil, now dubbed the ‘Dragon Man’ skull. They would like to ascertain more information and determine the specific lineage of this skull.
Perhaps further study into this specific find could showcase a major divergence in human evolution and we could discover many new things which we had otherwise not discovered.
Hopefully, scientists will be able to unearth further remains/evidence that showcase more about this potentially new species. Although it is useful, one skull simply isn’t enough information for scientists to exclusively rely on.