Our missing-link ancestor is being assigned a new species name: Homo longi, from the Chinese word “long”, meaning dragon.
Researchers’ analysis suggests that it is more closely related to Homo sapiens than to Neanderthals.
Dragon Man is a Breakthrough discovery
“In terms of fossils in the last million years, this is one of the most important yet discovered,” Stringer told BBC News.
“What you have here is a separate branch of humanity that is not on its way to becoming Homo sapiens (our species), but represents a long-separate lineage which evolved in the region for several hundred thousand years and eventually went extinct.”
Dragon Man’s brain size appears to be the same as the average human. And the skull is huge. An analysis of the skull has been published in the journal The Innovation.
According to artist reconstruction, Dragon Man would have been strong, powerfully built, and tough. He had large square-shaped eyes, a thick brow that protruded, and a very wide mouth, with oversized teeth.
