Editor’s note for Friday, June 25, 2021

My thoughts today:

Scientists today announced “that a massive fossilized skull that is at least 140,000 years old is a new species of ancient human,” reports the New York Times.

The species has been named Homo longi and given the nickname “Dragon Man” (龙人 lóng rén) because it was found in Heilongjiang Province. The researchers said that Dragon Man might be closer to Homo sapiens than The Neanderthals, and this could change our understanding of human evolution.

Just as interesting as the fossil, is the story of how it was discovered:

In 1933, a laborer working at a bridge construction site in the city of Harbin discovered the peculiar skull. It’s likely that the man — whose name has been withheld by his family — recognized that he had found a scientifically important specimen. Just four years earlier, researchers had found another humanlike skull, nicknamed Peking Man, near Beijing. It appeared to link the people of Asia to their evolutionary forerunners.

Rather than hand over the new skull to the Japanese authorities who occupied northeast China at the time, the laborer chose to hide it. He did not mention the skull to anyone for decades…Shortly before his death in 2018, the laborer told his family about the fossil. They went to the well and found it. The family donated it to the Geoscience Museum of Hebei GEO University, where scientists immediately could see that it had been exquisitely well preserved.

Our word of the day is come out of the closet (出柜 chū guì).

Have a great weekend!

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief