Scientists Discovered a New Human Species That Defies Conventional Wisdom

• Many known hominin fossils defy species classification, with the most famous example being the ever-enigmatic Denisovans.
• A new study by anthropologists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Hawai’i suggests that many of these anthropological mysteries might in fact be members of a new species: Homo juluensis.
• This potential breakthrough occurred when the researchers were devising a new organizational system for fossils and discovered similarities among certain cranial and dental fossils—all with distinct differences from other hominin species.

Although only one species of hominin (a tribe of the subfamily Homininae) exists on the planet today—good ole Homo sapiens—the human family, throughout more geologically-recent Earth history, was comprised of a complex tableaux of members. And over the years, scientists have tried to get a clearer picture of that prehistoric story by excavating ancient human sites around the world.

Now, anthropologists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Hawai’i are illustrating a previously unknown—or, rather, uncategorized—chapter of that story with the introduction of a new human species, H. juluensis. The researchers published the details of this new species in the journals Nature Communications and PaleoAnthropology.

H. juluensis—the name for which means “big head”—thrived in eastern Asia from 300,000 years ago to around 50,000 years ago, when the species died out. According to the researchers, this group likely hunted wild horses, fashioned stoned tools, and even processed animal hides to survive frigid winters. University of Hawai’i’s Christopher J. Bae said that the breakthrough for discovering this possibly new species came when he and his team were devising a new system for organizing fossil evidence.

“Although we started this project several years ago, we did not expect being able to propose a new hominin (human ancestor) species and then to be able to organize the hominin fossils from Asia into different groups,” Bae said in a press statement. “This study clarifies a hominin fossil record that has tended to include anything that cannot easily be assigned to Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens.”

One possible member of the new species H. juluensis isn’t a newcomer to science by any stretch. Denisovians—first identified in 2010 via DNA extracted from a young girl’s fingerbone found in Siberia—have never been given a species classification, but Bae believes that they could belong to this new species.

H. juluensis also potentially solves another mystery of the Xujiayao hominin fossils, which have long perplexed researchers, as the remains display a mix of H. erectus and H. sapiens features. According to a study by the scientists in the journal PaleoAnthropology, these remains have been confused for a variety of taxonomic representations, but note that differences in the cranium (spoiler: it’s big), the teeth and jaws, and a few other features denote a new species represented in fossil remains including Penghu 1 (jawbone), Xiahe (mandible), Xuchang (partial crania), and a variety of Denisova fossils.

Although this is a convincing argument that these particular specimens belong to a previously unknown human species, more research will be needed before anthropologists bust out the “Welcome to the Family” banners. But because these fossils still defy species classification, it’s likely only a matter of time before the hominin tribe increases by one (or more).