Posted on 06/29/2021 3:13:28 PM PDT by Roman_War_Criminal
The discovery of a huge fossilised skull that was wrapped up and hidden in a Chinese well nearly 90 years ago has forced scientists to rewrite the story of human evolution.
Analysis of the remains has revealed a new branch of the human family tree that points to a previously unknown sister group more closely related to modern humans than the Neanderthals.
The extraordinary fossil has been named a new human species, Homo longi or “Dragon man”, by Chinese researchers, although other experts are more cautious about the designation.
“I think this is one of the most important finds of the past 50 years,” said Prof Chris Stringer, research leader at the Natural History Museum in London, who worked on the project. “It’s a wonderfully preserved fossil.”
Dragon Man: A giant? The skull appears to have a remarkable backstory. According to the researchers, it was originally found in 1933 by Chinese labourers building a bridge over the Songhua River in Harbin, in China’s northernmost province, Heilongjiang, during the Japanese occupation.
To keep the skull from falling into Japanese hands it was wrapped and hidden in an abandoned well, resurfacing only in 2018 after the man who hid it told his grandson about it shortly before he died.
An international team led by Prof Qiang Ji at the Hebei Geo University in China drew on geochemical techniques to narrow down when the skull came to rest in Harbin, dating the bones to at least 146,000 years old. The skull has a unique combination of primitive and more modern features, with the face, in particular, more closely resembling Homo sapiens. One huge molar remains.
The skull, which is 23cm long and more than 15cm wide, is substantially larger than a modern human’s and has ample room, at 1,420ml, for a modern human brain. Beneath the thick brow ridge, the face has large square eye sockets, but is delicate despite its size. “This guy had a huge head,” said Stringer.
The researchers believe the skull belonged to a male, about 50 years old, who would have been an impressive physical specimen. His wide, bulbous nose allowed him to breathe huge volumes of air, indicating a high-energy lifestyle, while sheer size would have helped him withstand the brutally cold winters in the region.
“Homo longi is heavily built, very robust,” said Prof Xijun Ni, a paleoanthropologist at Hebei. “It is hard to estimate the height, but the massive head should match a height higher than the average of modern humans.”
To work out where the Harbin individual fitted into human history, the scientists fed measurements from the fossil and 95 other skulls into software that compiled the most likely family tree. To their surprise, the Harbin skull and a handful of others from China formed a new branch closer to modern humans than Neanderthals.
The Chinese researchers believe the Harbin skull is distinct enough to make it a new species, but Stringer is not convinced. He believes it is similar to another found in Dali county in China in 1978.
“I prefer to call it Homo daliensis, but it’s not a big deal,” he said. “The important thing is the third lineage of later humans that are separate from Neanderthals and separate from Homo sapiens.”
Details are published in three papers in The Innovation. (study 1, study 2, study 3).
“Genetic analysis shows that these species interacted and interbred – our own genetics contain the legacy of many of these ghost species. But what is a sobering thought, is that despite all this diversity, a new version of Homo sapiens emerged from Africa about 60,000 years ago which clearly out-competed, out-bred, and even out-fought these other closely related species, causing their extinction. It is only by painstaking searching and analysis of their fossils, such as the Harbin skull, do we know of their existence.”
Let's see now.
23cm = 230mm
There are 25.4mm in 1 inch
Length of skull in inches = 230mm/25.4mm = 9.06 inches... This basically correlates to an XL hat size.
Odd, I don’t know if I’ve ever actually watched that movie. Poor Mr. Connery. I’ve seen enough screenshots like this to give me the “cannot be unseen” effect, but ... Yeah.
It’s probably terrible, but curiosity.
Curiosity would probably kill my few remaining brain cells.
Let's see now.
23cm = 230mm
There are 25.4mm in 1 inch
Length of skull in inches = 230mm/25.4mm = 9.06 inches... This basically correlates to an XL hat size.
I hope it turns out to be a Denisovan.
I’ll tell you now… it’s fake.
ROFL
I bought a 3-xl back brace from China and need 10 more inches of strap to connect, fits a 38” waist.
Channels for blood vessels, probably.
Foramina. They accomodate blood vessels and nerves. The big hole that the spinal cord enters/exits the cranium through is the foramen magnum.
Holes: We have them, too, but ours aren’t so large. Each one is an infraorbital foramen, In an opening in the maxillary bone of the skull that permits the passage of the infraorbital artery and the infraorbital vein,along with a nerve branch.
One day in the future, paleontologists will dig up Shaq’s bones. But they’ll be smart enough not to think that they discovered a new race of giants.
So we have solved the mystery of where that Samoan guy went after the BBQ.
Zardoz is kinda bad but not terrible. Connery’s “costume” is one of a kind, though.
ISWYDT
Nephilim skull
I’d like to know how it would compare to Andre the Giant’s skull. If it’s not bigger, I think it only proves that gigantism has been around for a very long time.
Cracks me up. The geonome and evolution are mathematically incongruent. Thus the new math. Not as funny as an evolutionist who fears death though.
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