How An Ancient Crushed Skull In China Could Change A Lot About Human Family Tree

Last Updated:September 26, 2025, 19:14 IST

The Yunxian 2 skull from Hubei links Denisovans and Dragon Man, suggesting a complex human split in East Asia over 1 million years ago.

If correct, the findings suggest the Denisovan lineage emerged hundreds of thousands of years earlier than previously believed.

A fossilized skull unearthed from a riverbank in central China more than three decades ago is forcing scientists to rethink human evolution. According to a new analysis published in the journal Science, the 1-million-year-old specimen- long considered too distorted to classify- may belong to an early ancestor of the Denisovans, a mysterious population of archaic humans.

Using advanced CT scans and digital reconstruction, researchers restored the badly crushed Yunxian 2 skull from Hubei province, revealing features that connect it to “Dragon Man” (Homo longi) and the Denisovans. If correct, the findings suggest the Denisovan lineage emerged hundreds of thousands of years earlier than previously believed.

Chris Stringer, paleoanthropologist at London’s Natural History Museum, said, “This changes a lot of thinking because it suggests that by one million years ago, our ancestors had already split into distinct groups. It points to a much earlier and more complex evolutionary split than previously thought.”

The team’s broader comparison of over 100 fossil skulls and jawbones pushes back the origins of Homo sapiens and their relatives by as much as 400,000 years. Their model indicates that modern humans and Denisovans shared a common ancestor about 1.32 million years ago, while Neanderthals branched off earlier, around 1.38 million years ago. This reverses the long-held view that Neanderthals were our closest relatives.

The Yunxian fossils- discovered in 1989 and 1990- had been dismissed by some as deformed examples of Homo erectus. But the reconstruction showed distinctive traits, such as flat cheekbones, that set them apart. Stringer and colleagues argue the fossils represent an early form of Homo longi, the species dubbed Dragon Man after a skull found in northeastern China in 2021. The analysis also groups other puzzling Chinese fossils, once floated as new species like Homo juluensis (“huge-headed man”), with the Denisovan lineage.

If the timeline holds, the only likely common ancestor of humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans would be Homo erectus, a species that lived across Asia and Africa around 1.5 million years ago.

The findings also revive debates about whether the ancestors of modern humans evolved exclusively in Africa or whether Asia played a larger role than once thought.

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