The ‘dragon man’ skull. Image Credit: Ni et al., The Innovation, 2021

A fossilized skull discovered in the 1930s has now been identified as that of an elusive, ancient species of human.

Originally unearthed by a construction worker during the building of a bridge across the Songhua River in Harbin, China, the skull – named ‘Dragon Man’ – only came to light when the man’s family decided to donate it to Hebei Geo University in Shijiazhuang back in 2018.

In 2021, researchers declared that it belonged to a new species of human – Homo longi – but as it would turn out, there was more to the skull than met the eye.

Now, two new studies headed up by paleontologist Qiaomei Fu from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have revealed that the skull, far from being that of a new species, is actually that of a Denisovan – making this the first known skull of this species ever identified.

Before this, all we had to go on to understand the Denisovans were a few fossil fragments.

To identify the skull, the team extracted proteins from the petrous bone as well as mitochondrial DNA from the plaque on its teeth.

“The finding that the human DNA of the Harbin specimen is better preserved in the dental calculus than in dense bones, including the petrous bone, suggests that dental calculus may be a valuable source for investigating DNA in Middle Pleistocene hominins,” the researchers wrote.

The findings indicated that the Denisovans were not that unlike other species of ancient humans from the time, although further fossil discoveries could change this conclusion in the future.

The DNA has also helped to more conclusively identify other fossil fragments as those of Denisovans.

As for Homo longi , however – sadly, it seems that this particular human ancestor never actually existed.