This One Million-Year-Old Skull Skull Reveals a Missing Link in Human Evolution

The shocking discovery, which is estimated to date back over one million years, to a period when Earth was inhabited by other species of humans. Some researchers have suggested the skull is the remains of a hybrid human.

According to the archaeologists working in the region, the skull’s features were unlike anything they’d ever seen. They called it “The Yunxian Man.” After careful analysis, researchers determined that the skull could be well over 900,000 years old.

But the Yunxian Man skull was difficult to categorize because of location, age, and psychical characteristics.

The earliest form of human was the Neanderthal, which originated in Europe and Asia around 400,000 years ago. They are characterized by their long skulls, thick ridges above their eyes, and wide, large noses.

The researchers carefully studied the features of the scan and determined that the Yunxian skull is part Homo sapiens, the race of all humans on Earth, and part Homo longi, a long-lost sister species.

After modern analyses were carried out on a separate skull discovered in China’s Songhua River in the 1930s, researchers concluded that the Homo-longi could be closer related to Homo-sapiens than the Neanderthals, per The Daily Mail.

“It is reasonable to conclude that Yunxian is morphologically and chronologically close to the last common ancestor of the lineages of H. sapiens and Dragon Man,” said the authors of the study on the research site BioRxiv.

The skulls were all recovered over the past five decades. Yet they struggled to determine which species it belonged to. “It might seem like simple science to determine what bone fits to what species, but scientists have yet to agree just how many human-like species there were in our recent archeological history,” said archaeologist Anna Goldfield.

Due to its physical features, including its elongated skull, researchers initially believed the Yunxian man skull belonged to the Denisovan species that originated in Asia around 500,000 years ago.

While only a few tiny pieces of bone and teeth have been found, this long extinct spices’ DNA make up some modern day communities. According to the Guardian, 6% of genes found in modern New Guineans and 3% to 5% of aborigianl Australians’ DNA is made up of Denisovans’ DNA.

Despite being genetically similar enough to interbreed, researchers are not sure how Denisovans looked because only fragments exist and are extremely rare.

However, the discovery of the Yunxian Man provides new insight into human evolution and the complex interactions between different hominin species.

The earliest traces of our species’ development into Homo sapiens started a million years ago, making a significant physical and behavioral change influenced by environmental pressures, migration, and adaptation.

While these early hominins were not yet human, they displayed traits that hinted at what would come. One example is the ability to walk upright on two legs, which allowed for more efficient movement.

These species began using fire and tools, which played a crucial role in their survival and the development of social structures.

The earliest species in this genus is the Homo erectus, a highly successful species that spread throughout Africa and into Asia.

Because Homo sapiens were able to innovate and adapt in new ways, we were able to create art and complex social structures that connected us like never before.

These migrations allowed interactions between other speices, including Neanderthals in Europe and Denisovans in Asia. These interactions lead to mating, which has a lasting impact on the human genome.

After analyzing all of the data they collected, researchers concluded that the Yunxian man was both part Homo-longi and part Homo sapiens, meaning it was an offspring of both.

“The reconstructed Yunxian 2 suggests that it is an early member of the Asian ‘Dragon Man’ lineage, which probably includes the Denisovans, and is the sister group of the Homo sapiens lineage,” the authors wrote.

“Both the H. sapiens and Dragon Man lineages had deep roots extending beyond the Middle Pleistocene, and the basal position of the Yunxian fossil cranium suggests it represents a population lying close to the last common ancestor of the two lineages,” said the authors.

Ni hopes that further research on the skulls and the regions in which they were found will shed light on this ancient species of humanoid.

If scientists can confirm in the future that Homo-longi are, in fact, descendants of the Denisovans, it could help researchers better understand the history of this species and the evolution of humanity.

Knowing where we came from and how we came to be could unlock an understand about ourselves. What we do with this knowledge is entirely up to you.