A well-preserved Middle Pleistocene skull dated to approximately 146,000 years ago that was discovered near Harbin City, in Heilongjiang Province, northeastern China. It is large and robust, with a combination of archaic and modern human features. In 2021, researchers proposed that the Harbin cranium represents a new species, Homo longi (“Dragon Man”), which they argued might be a close sister group to modern humans. Others have classified it within the broader Homo heidelbergensis–Denisovan spectrum, seeing it as part of the archaic human diversity in Pleistocene East Asia.
The Harbin cranium was originally found in 1933 by a Chinese laborer working on the construction of a bridge, who hid the skull in a well to prevent it from being seized by occupying Japanese forces. Knowledge of the skull and its location was kept secret for decades until the worker’s family retrieved it shortly before his death. It was donated to the Hebei GEO University in 2018.
