Please see below
A 146,000-Year-Old Fossil Dubbed 'Dragon Man' Might Be One of Our Closest Relatives | Science | Smithsonian Magazine
There is a lot of doubt, since the fossil skull was not found in location but was kept by some family for 90 years. But the study does a good job on doing the best of what is actually available.
How the date of the skull was established
Direct uranium-series dating suggests the skull is at least 146,000 years old, but a lot more work was needed to attempt to put the isolated fossil into context after 90 years.
The team used X-ray fluorescence to compare the skull’s chemical composition with those of other Middle Pleistocene mammal fossils discovered in the Harbin riverside area, and found them strikingly similar. An analysis of rare-earth elements, from small pieces of bone in the skull’s nasal cavity also matched those of human and mammal remains from the Harbin locale found in sediments dated to 138,000 to 309,000 years ago.
A very close inspection even found sediments stuck inside the skull’s nasal cavity, and their strontium isotope ratios proved a reasonable match for those found in a core that was drilled near the bridge where the skull was said to have been discovered.
Nature of the skull and Quantitative Analysis
The big cranium was able to house a brain similar in size to our own. But other features are more archaic. The skull has a thick brow, big—almost square—eye sockets and a wide mouth to hold oversized teeth. This intriguing mix of human characteristics presents a mosaic that the authors define as distinct from other Homo species—from the more primitive Homo heidelbergensis and Homo erectus to more modern humans like ourselves.
Ni says the team compared 600 different morphological characteristics of the skull across a selection of some 95 varied human skulls and mandibles. They used a set of mathematical techniques on all this data to create branching diagrams that sketch out the phylogenic relations of the different Homo species.
Conclusion
Our results suggest that the Harbin cranium, or Homo longi, represents a lineage that is the sister group of the H. sapiens lineage. So we say H. longi is phylogenetically closer to H. sapiens than Neanderthals are.
Alternative Ideas
He currently favors a view that the Harbin fossil and the Dali skull, a nearly complete 250,000-year-old specimen found in China’s Shaanxi province which also displays an interesting mix of features, might be grouped as a different species dubbed H. daliensis. But Stringer was also enthusiastic about what can still be learned from the Harbin skull, noting that it “should also help to flesh out our knowledge of the mysterious Denisovans, and that will form part of the next stage of research.
I am not sure why the set of articles was published in the Innovations journal which is quite new and open access. Usually poorer quality papers are published in such journals. So that aspect I need to verify later.
A 146,000-Year-Old Fossil Dubbed 'Dragon Man' Might Be One of Our Closest Relatives | Science | Smithsonian Magazine
There is a lot of doubt, since the fossil skull was not found in location but was kept by some family for 90 years. But the study does a good job on doing the best of what is actually available.
How the date of the skull was established
Direct uranium-series dating suggests the skull is at least 146,000 years old, but a lot more work was needed to attempt to put the isolated fossil into context after 90 years.
The team used X-ray fluorescence to compare the skull’s chemical composition with those of other Middle Pleistocene mammal fossils discovered in the Harbin riverside area, and found them strikingly similar. An analysis of rare-earth elements, from small pieces of bone in the skull’s nasal cavity also matched those of human and mammal remains from the Harbin locale found in sediments dated to 138,000 to 309,000 years ago.
A very close inspection even found sediments stuck inside the skull’s nasal cavity, and their strontium isotope ratios proved a reasonable match for those found in a core that was drilled near the bridge where the skull was said to have been discovered.
Nature of the skull and Quantitative Analysis
The big cranium was able to house a brain similar in size to our own. But other features are more archaic. The skull has a thick brow, big—almost square—eye sockets and a wide mouth to hold oversized teeth. This intriguing mix of human characteristics presents a mosaic that the authors define as distinct from other Homo species—from the more primitive Homo heidelbergensis and Homo erectus to more modern humans like ourselves.
Ni says the team compared 600 different morphological characteristics of the skull across a selection of some 95 varied human skulls and mandibles. They used a set of mathematical techniques on all this data to create branching diagrams that sketch out the phylogenic relations of the different Homo species.
Conclusion
Our results suggest that the Harbin cranium, or Homo longi, represents a lineage that is the sister group of the H. sapiens lineage. So we say H. longi is phylogenetically closer to H. sapiens than Neanderthals are.
Alternative Ideas
He currently favors a view that the Harbin fossil and the Dali skull, a nearly complete 250,000-year-old specimen found in China’s Shaanxi province which also displays an interesting mix of features, might be grouped as a different species dubbed H. daliensis. But Stringer was also enthusiastic about what can still be learned from the Harbin skull, noting that it “should also help to flesh out our knowledge of the mysterious Denisovans, and that will form part of the next stage of research.
I am not sure why the set of articles was published in the Innovations journal which is quite new and open access. Usually poorer quality papers are published in such journals. So that aspect I need to verify later.