Dragon Man Emerges: Latest Reconstruction of Homo Longi from China
The Homo longi skull was found 90 years ago in China. Only a few years ago was it established that it belonged to a previously unknown human species. What similarities and differences link it to modern humans?
The history of human evolution still holds many secrets. Researchers regularly uncover new fossils or discover unknown facts about findings from years past. Thanks to these, we know not only how our ancestors and relatives looked but also how they lived and the course of their migrations. Recently, Homo longi is once again on the tongues of scientists. This is due to the latest reconstruction of the face of the so-called Dragon Man. Its name comes from Long Jiang, or the Dragon River, in the Heilongjiang province in China.
What did Homo longi look like?
The research on Homo longi dates back to 1933. It was then, on the Chinese Plain, that an almost entirely complete skull was found, dating back at least 146,000 years. The discovery, as often happens, occurred by chance. At that time, a bridge was being built over the Songhua River, and the skull was found by workers. Its origin remained a mystery for a long time, primarily due to unfavorable wartime conditions for research. Eventually, the skull reached paleontologists in 2018. It was only a few years after that that researchers realized it belonged to a previously unknown human species.
Anatomically, H. longi resembles other specimens from the middle Pleistocene found in China. Its skull is low and long. Attention is drawn to its massive brow ridges, wide eye sockets, and prominent lips. Importantly, it is also the longest skull ever found in any human species. It was established that the ‘Dragon Man,’ similar to modern humans, had a flat face. However, it differed with a rather large nose. The volume of its brain was 1420 cm3, corresponding to the range attributed to modern humans and Neanderthals.
Where and when did the ‘Dragon Man’ live?
Interestingly, it is now believed that the ‘Dragon Man’ may be more closely related to modern humans than even the Neanderthals. This is supposedly confirmed by the digital reconstruction of its face. The visualization was prepared by the Brazilian expert Cícero Moraes. His previous works include facial models of people referred to as ‘hobbits’ or Egyptian pharaohs. This time, the researcher created a digital skull model using data and images provided by the 2021 research authors. Moraes filled in the missing parts of the H. longi skull based on the Homo erectus skull model.
The next step was to overlay markers of soft tissues, achieved through computer tomography scans of modern humans and chimpanzees. Moraes then shaped them to fit the contours of the Homo longi skull. The result was an ‘anatomically consistent’ digital bust. The original model is presented in shades of gray. However, this is not the final version.
The first such reconstruction of an unknown human species
To make the reconstruction more accessible to the general public, the Brazilian artist added hair to the model and applied coloring. Through this artistic approach, he brought out the most vivid aspects of its appearance. However, the digital model reveals more than just aesthetic details. Based on the final version, it was calculated that the head circumference of Homo longi was 65.1 centimeters, the largest among all known hominids. This puts it on par with gorillas and lions.
What contributed to the evolution of such impressive proportions in H. longi? According to experts analyzing the skull, this might have been an adaptation to the local extreme temperatures. In the region where the skull was found, winter temperatures currently drop to as low as 16 degrees Celsius below zero. Nearly 150,000 years ago, an individual from the Chinese Plain inhabited similarly cold, steppe-like environments. Alongside it in the same area lived, among others, woolly mammoths, giant deer, and ancestors of modern brown bears.
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