Skull find could clarify evolutionary puzzles

Skull find could clarify evolutionary puzzles

A mysterious skull that was recovered from a fountain in the northeast of China in 2018 aroused great interest because he did not match other known species of prehistoric people. Scientists have now found indications of where this fossil skull can be classified, which may be a decisive piece of the puzzle in another enigmatic evolutionary puzzle.

genetic connection to Denisovaners

After several attempts had failed, the researchers, genetic material from the fossilized skull- dragon man -- to extract. The material could connect to a mysterious group of early humans, the denisovanern . In the past, only a few fossilized bone splinters had been discovered by Denisovaners, the small size of which gave little information about the appearance of this mysterious population of prehistoric people. In addition, the group never received an official scientific name.

skull as windows to the past

scientists consider skulls with the typical humps and grooves as the best fossil remains to understand the shape or appearance of a extinct hominine type. If the new findings are confirmed, this could provide a face for the name Denisovaner.

"I have the feeling that we have revealed some of the secrets about this population," said Qiaomei Fu, professor at the Institute for Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and main author of new research. "After 15 years we now know what the first Denisovan skull looks like."

history of the Dragon Man

The Dragon Man skull was discovered in 1933 by a worker in the city of Harbin in northeastern China. The man discovered the find as he built a bridge over the Songhua River when this region was under Japanese occupation. He took the copy home with him and saved it for safety at the bottom of a well.

The man never got his "darling" back, and the skull remained unknown to science for decades until his relatives found out about it shortly before his death. His family donated the fossil to the Hebei Geo University, and researchers described it for the first time in a series of Published in 2021 . It turned out that the skull is at least 146,000 years old.

The puzzle Denisovaner

The researchers argued that the fossil earned a new species name due to the unique nature of the skull and christened it as Homo Longi-derived from Heilongjiang, the black dragon flow, in the province in which the skull was found. At the time, some experts suspected that the skull could be one of the Denisovans, while others in a group difficult to classify Fossils classified, which led to intensive debates and made the molecular data of the fossil particularly valuable.

molecular analyzes and their meaning

The investigation, which was published in two scientific articles, could help close gaps over a time when Homo sapiens were not the only people on the planet and teach scientists more about modern people. Our species once coexisted with Denisovans and Neanderthals for over tens of thousands of years before the two died out. Today most people enter Genetic heritage of these old encounters . Although Neandertal fossils have been examined for over a century, only a few details of the mysterious Denisovans are still known, and a skull fossil can reveal a lot.

new approaches to DNA analysis

fu and her colleagues tried to win old DNA from six rehearsals that were taken from the surviving tooth of the Dragon Man and the Petrous bone of the skull, but this was not possible. The team also tried to extract genetic material from the skull of the tooth covering - a deposit that can harden over time and preserve DNA. The researchers managed to win mitochondrial DNA, which revealed a connection between the sample and the well -known Denisovanergenome, according to a new article that in the magazine Cell was published.

important knowledge for paleoanthropology

The molecular data provided by the two works are potentially very important, said anthropologist Chris Stringer, head of research for the human origins in the London Natural History Museum. "In cooperation with Chinese scientists, I am working on new morphological analyzes of human fossils, including Harbin," he said. "Combined with our studies, this work is increasingly likely that Harbin is the most complete fossil of a Denisovan that has been found so far."

with the Dragon MAN skull, which is now connected to Denisovans due to molecular evidence, it becomes easier for paleoanthropologists to classify other potential Denisovan finds from China and other places. MCrae, NI and Stringer agree that Homo Longi will probably become the official species name for Denisovan, although other names have also been proposed.

"To rename the entire group of Denisovan fossils as Homo Longi is a step that has a solid basis, since the scientific name Homo Longi was the first to be the first to be connected to Denisovan fossils," explained McRae. Nevertheless, he doubts that the informal name Denisovan will disappear in the near future, which indicates that it may be preserved as a abbreviation for the species, as Neandertaler for Homo Neanderthalensis stands.

The appearance of the Denisovans

The knowledge also enables a better understanding of what Denisovan might have looked like, provided that the Dragon Man skull belonged to a typical individual. According to MCrae, the old man would have very strong eyebrow bustle, a brain of comparable size such as that of the Neanderthals and modern people, but larger teeth than both relatives. Overall, Denisovans would have had a massive and more robust appearance.

"Like the famous picture of a Neanderthal in modern clothing, they would probably still be recognizable as 'humans'," said McRae. "They are still more puzzling relatives, albeit a little less than before. There is still a lot to do to find out who the Denisovans were and how they are related to us and other hominins."