Dragon Man

Why in news?

• Researchers have found that a 140,000-year-old fossilised skull excavated from northeastern China belongs to a previously unknown human species — Homo Longi.

About the history Dragon Man:

• The skull was first found by labourers while building a bridge over the Songhua River in Harbin as late as 1933.
• Back at the time, the region was governed by Japan and in a bid to safeguard it from falling into Japanese hands, the Chinese labourers wrapped it and hid it in a well, where it remained for over 90 years.
• The skull was found only after one of the labourers told the story to his grandson in 2018.
• Once found by the family, the fossil was donated to the Geoscience Museum of Hebei GEO University.

About the morphology

• Dragon Man (Homo longi) seems to be an extinct species of archaic human dating to at minimum 146,000 years ago during the Middle Pleistocene.
• The Harbin individual inhabited a cold, steppeland environment alongside the woolly mammoth, giant deer, Przewalski's horse, elk, buffalo, and brown bear.
• The skull, which is 23 cm long and more than 15 cm wide, is larger than a modern human skull with enough room for a human brain.
• It consists of thick eye sockets, brow ridge, and researchers believe it belongs to a man who was about 50 years old.
• The specimen belongs to a well-built man who could withstand brutal cold winters in the region.
• The man appears to have had low cheekbones and his mouth was broad, the lower jaw is missing.

Prelims Question

”Dragon Man”, a term recently in news, is a hominid fossil found in:
(a)Philippines
(b)China
(c)Mongolia
(d)Russia

Answer to the Prelims Question