The skull formerly known as the Harbin "Dragon Man", found in China over 90 years ago, has been asigned to a Denisovan. It is the first known skull of these mysterious people.
A paper published on June 18, 2025 in Science reported the following:
Denisovans are a hominin group primarily known through genomes or proteins, but the precise morphological features of Denisovans remain elusive due to the fragmentary nature of discovered fossils. Here we report ninety-five endogenous proteins retrieved from a nearly complete cranium from Harbin, China, dating to at least 146,000 years ago and previous assigned to a new species, Homo longi. This individual has three Denisovan derived amino acid variants and clusters with Denisova 3, suggesting the Harbin individual belongs to a Denisovan population. This study fills the gap between morphological and molecular evidence, enhancing our understanding of Denisovans’ spatiotemporal dispersal and evolutionary history.>
Qiaomei Fu et al. ,The proteome of the late Middle Pleistocene Harbin individual.Science0,eadu9677 DOI:10.1126/science.adu9677
The skull had been discovered in 1933, and not long ago, in 2021, had been proposed as a new species, called Homo longi. Now it is the first remains of a Denisovan beyond some teeth, and a finger bone found in the Denisova Cave in Altai.
Another paper published in April 2025 confirmed a Denisovan origin for a jawbone dredged up from the bottom of the sea in Taiwan (see my 2015 post on this Primitive yet recent jawbone from Taiwan; Penghu 1).
So now we have plenty of Denisovan remains and now need to find out what link exists between them and our very old ancestor, Homo erectus. Erectus was well established in Asia for over 1.5 million years and surely interacted with Denisovans.
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Keep up the excellent work, Vicente!
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