Known as "Dragon Man," this species comes with the scientific classification of Homo longi (long being the Mandarin Chinese word for dragon) and lived around 146,000 years ago in China, Science Magazine reported.
The discovery of a new hominid species itself is incredible enough, but the story of Homo longi is especially unique due to the circumstances of its discovery.
In 1933, the Japanese army occupied northern China. While there, in the city of Harbin, soldiers forced a local man to build a bridge across a river. But while being forced into manual labor, he spotted a nearly complete human skull in the river. Hiding it in a well to keep it safe from the soldiers, the skull was only recently retrieved in 2018 after the man told the story to his grandchildren on his death bed, CBS News recounted.
The grandchildren recovered the skull and donated it to the Geoscience Museum at Hebei GEO University. However, as the man died, taking one secret of this discovery to the grave: Where exactly he found the skull.
And with that crucial piece of information missing, scientists got to work dating the skull and researching it as much as they could.
The skull itself is massive: nine inches long and six inches wide - far larger than the human skull. And as the researchers noted, it's very different from any other Homo skull. The eye sockets were almost square-like, the mouth wide and the brow ridges very thick, as noted in Science Magazine.
It is possible the skull could be of a Denisovan, judging by the jaw. These Neanderthal relatives were known to have lived in the Denisova Cave in Siberia and left some DNA, but the only fossils left behind were a pinkie bone, teeth and a bit of a skull. The Homo longi's distinct and unique molars fits with the hones found in Denisova, according to some scholars.
The findings of this study, which were published in the academic journal The Innovation on Friday, concede that it is possible Homo longi is a Denisovan. According to London Natural History Museum paleontologist Chris Stringer, who told The Guardian he also believes it could be similar to another species found in China's Dali county in 1978, this is possible. However, as the Denisovan fossils were so small and there are so few of them, it's impossible to make a full conclusion.
But what was the most important part of this finding was what researchers concluded regarding its place on the hominid family tree. Rather than being part of the Neanderthal lineage as some may have expected, this formed a third branch entirely, making it closer to Homo sapiens than Neanderthals were.
It is also notable that this discovery comes after another shocking discovery was made in Israel. In an excavation near Nesher Ramla, a new type of hominid undiscovered by science was found, with evidence showing that they coexisted with Homo sapiens. This Nesher Ramla Homo lived some 130,000 years ago and seems to be an ancestor to Neanderthals. However, this challenged the widely accepted scientific consensus that Neanderthals originated in Europe.
Speaking regarding the Nesher Ramla Homo discovery, Stringer said the fossils were less complete than the Dragon Man skull. However, it was entirely plausible that various Homo species coexisted in the Levant region, due to it being a crossroads between Africa, Europe and Asia, CNN reported.
Rossella Tercatin contributed to this report.