A fossilized skull unearthed in central China over 30 years ago has upended long-standing theories about early human evolution, according to a peer-reviewed study published in Science on September 25. The cranium, dubbed Yunxian 2, was first discovered in 1990 in Hubei province, but its distorted condition kept scientists from fully analyzing it—until now.
Thanks to advanced 3D reconstruction techniques, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and international collaborators have digitally restored the skull, revealing a striking combination of traits that don’t quite fit into any known human species. The results suggest Yunxian 2 belongs to a long-lost lineage that likely coexisted with Homo sapiens and Neanderthals for hundreds of thousands of years.
“Our reconstruction shows a mosaic of primitive and derived traits, placing Yunxian 2 in the same clade as the Harbin cranium—Homo longi—and possibly the enigmatic Denisovans,” said Dr. Xijun Ni, co-author of the study. “This fossil forces us to rethink the evolutionary tree of our genus.”
A Digital Resurrection Reveals a New Evolutionary Branch
Using high-resolution CT scans, the team meticulously reassembled the cranium—long thought to be too crushed for study. Once reconstructed, the skull showed a large, elongated braincase and a cranial capacity of around 1,143 cubic centimetres—significantly larger than typical Homo erectus specimens, yet not quite modern.
The study’s authors compared Yunxian 2 with over 50 fossil crania and more than 150 modern human skulls. Statistical models and geometric morphometrics revealed that it shares multiple features with Homo longi, the so-called “Dragon Man” whose fossil was discovered in northeast China in 2015 and published in The Innovation in 2021.
Importantly, the Yunxian 2 cranium displays anatomical traits that suggest it predates both Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, potentially sitting close to the last common ancestor of both species. Its facial structure, braincase shape, and brow ridge development make it an outlier—neither clearly archaic nor recognisably modern.
The Longi Clade and the Denisovan Connection
Researchers now believe that Yunxian 2 belonged to what they call the longi clade, an Asian hominin lineage that may have included the Denisovans—a mysterious group known almost exclusively through DNA from bone fragments found in Siberia’s Denisova Cave.
While Denisovan fossils remain scant, their genetic imprint survives in modern humans across East Asia and Oceania, with some populations carrying up to 5% Denisovan DNA, according to Nature. This suggests a wide and possibly complex geographical spread, adding weight to the idea that Asia was not just a migratory corridor, but a cradle of hominin diversity in its own right.
Bayesian dating models from the Science study estimate that the longi, Neanderthal, and sapiens lineages all split from a common ancestor between 1.38 and 1.02 million years ago. That’s a much earlier divergence than traditionally thought, implying that human evolution was not a slow linear path but a rapid, branching explosion of forms.
Asia Reemerges as a Hotspot for Human Origins
For decades, Africa and Europe have dominated the paleoanthropological spotlight. But discoveries like Yunxian 2 are reshaping that view. The study highlights Asia—not as a peripheral outpost—but as a region where multiple human species evolved in parallel, often in isolation, over immense spans of time.
“This is the strongest evidence yet that Asia hosted its own unique evolutionary experiments,” said Chris Stringer of London’s Natural History Museum, who co-authored the paper. “It challenges the Eurocentric model and places Asia at the heart of the story.”
The discovery also underscores how many hominin fossils—collected and stored decades ago—remain under-studied. In this case, the skull sat largely ignored in a Chinese museum’s archive for over 30 years. The authors suggest that other long-overlooked specimens may hold similar potential, waiting for modern tools to unlock their secrets.