Homo:Our family is growing?

Fossils of a piece of skull and jawbone discovered in 2021 near Ramla, Israel • TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY / AFP

Two recently discovered fossils claim the title of a new species of Homo and a close kinship with modern man. And spark debate. The first was unearthed in Israel, as part of the extension of a cement factory in Nesher Ramla. And his discoverers from the universities of Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv see in him a pre-Neanderthal of the genus Homo , an ancestor of our Neanderthals in Europe. The fossil has in fact been dated to around 125,000 years, whereas so far the remains of Neanderthals unearthed in Israel date back no more than 80,000 years.

Also read:Neanderthals sleep within us

However, these are only a few fragments of skull and jaw, and some teeth, but they do not correspond to any known species:Homo Nesher Ramla , as he was called, therefore shares commonalities with Neanderthals, but differs from modern man in the size of his teeth and the absence of a chin. His remains lay not in a cave, but in an open-air site, where he marketed game and mastered stone-cutting techniques. However, while the discovery is new to the country, some paleoanthropologists believe that Homo Nasher Ramla does not necessarily correspond to a species that would have given rise to Neanderthals (already present in Europe 400,000 years ago), as Israeli researchers would like.

The “Dragon Man”

The other new fossil comes from China, and its discoverers consider it even closer to us! A very well-preserved skull had been discovered near the city of Harbin in 1933 and hidden in a well, because at the time the country was occupied by Japan. Called Homo longi (“Dragon Man”), it was recently studied and dated to 145,000 years ago. It has both archaic and modern features and, for Chinese researchers who compared it with other human fossils found in China, it is closer to Homo sapiens than Neanderthal man, but does not correspond to any known species. Again, this interpretation is debated among scientists, some believing that the "Dragon Man" does not necessarily represent a separate species.