A new human species may have been identified

TWO NEWGEO studies add further pieces to the jigsaw puzzle that is human evolution. One reports a potential extra member of the genus . The other casts light on possible interbreeding between three human species in the Middle East.—“Dragon man” as translated into English from Chinese, via Latin—is not a novel find, but a reinterpretation of an existing one. The cranium in question was dug up in Harbin in 1933 and is held at Hebei University, in Shijiazhuang. It is 146,000 years old and was originally badged as an archaic form of . But Ni Xijun and Ji Qiang, who work at the university, disagree. As they report in the , the cranium would indeed have contained a brain similar in size to a modern human’s, but the fossil is too large to be and has molars and eye sockets which dwarf those of people today. Dr Ni and Dr Ji also realised that it is too long and low to be . It lacks the roundness of a modern human cranium.