Harbin cranium

The Harbin cranium is a nearly complete skull of an archaic human thought to originate from sediments of the Songhua River near Harbin on the Northeast China Plain. It dates to the late Middle Pleistocene, probably no older than 309,000 and no younger than 146,000 years ago. It was described in 2021, and that year it was controversially assigned as the holotype of the new human species Homo longi ("dragon man") named after the Chinese province of Heilongjiang (which means "black dragon river", the Chinese name for the Amur, of which the Songhua is a tributary) where the fossil is thought to have been found. The Harbin cranium was initially hypothesized to belong to the same species as the Denisovans, and subsequent proteomics and mitochondrial DNA analyses confirmed its Denisovan affinities.

The Harbin cranium is broadly anatomically similar to other Middle Pleistocene Chinese specimens. Like other archaic humans, the skull is low and long, with massively developed brow ridges, wide eye sockets, and a large mouth. The skull is the longest ever found from any human species. Like modern humans and the much earlier Homo antecessor, the face is rather flat, but with a larger nose. The brain volume was 1,420 cc, within the range of modern humans and Neanderthals.