There is something exciting about the fact that we are still discovering pieces of our human ancestry, hidden here on Earth for hundreds of thousands of years.

Just when you think our family tree is filled in, someone digs up a skeleton with an overly large skull no one has ever seen before.

Anthropologists are suggesting this “large-headed” extinct group lived in what’s modern-day China at the same time as homo sapiens. The paper, written by anthropologist Christopher Bae and paleontologist Xiuje Wu, was published in Nature Communications and proposes the existence of a brand-new group of humans called the Juluren.

Some have argued they are part of the Denisovan family, a subspecies of archaic humans, but these researchers believe their oversized skulls set them apart.

“Collectively, these fossils represent a new form of large-brained hominin.”

This new species would have lived between 300,000 and 50,000 years ago in easter Asia, hunting wild horses and other smaller game with stone tools.

“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. 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.”

All in all, they hope to convince others that the dispersal of human ancestors is more complex and nuanced than previously thought.

“I think the record is more expansive than most specialists have been assuming. Calling all these groups by the same name makes sense only as a contrast to recent humans, not as a description of their populations across space and time.”

I don’t think anyone should be surprised that human history is more rich and complex than some people want to believe.

We haven’t changed all that much where it counts.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read a story that reveals Earth’s priciest precious metal isn’t gold or platinum and costs over $10,000 an ounce!