During Japan’s occupation of China in 1933, when Sino- Japanese tensions were reaching its climax, a man who  was working on Dongjang bridge along the Songhua river in the city of Harbin, Heilongjiang province of China, accidentally discovered a skull. He deemed it fit to hid it  from his Japanese supervisors. However, in 2018,when the man had tuned 85,  he chronicled about his discovery to his grandchildren, who in turn, recovered it from an abandoned well, where it was shrouded by the old man and immediately turned it to the scientists of Geoscience Museum of Hubei GEO University. 
Researchers used Uranium series dating, to examine trace amount of Uranium and thorium in the bone. As uranium decays to thorium is known, therefore the age of the skull could be calculated from the ratio of these two elements.The findings determined that this human skull, named Harbin Cranium, was at least 146,000 years old belonging to Middle Pleistocene, and was significantly larger than all the archaic humans. It has large and almost square eye sockets, thick brow ridges, wide mouth and oversized teeth. It’s endocranial capacity was estimated to be 1420 ml, which was larger than that of homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo naledi, Homo floresiensis, and it somewhere falls in the range of Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals. “While it shows typical archaic human features, the Harbin cranium presents a mosaic combination of primitive and derived characters setting itself apart from all the other previously-named Homo species,” Professor Ji said.

Due to the distinctness of its characteristics, scholars have decided over naming the cranium as a new species of Homo, altogether. They call it Homo longi. Its name is derived from Long Jiang, common usage for Heilongjiang province, which literally translates to dragon river.
Scholars also suggest that Homo sapiens and Homo longi would have been face to face with each other. “We see multiple evolutionary lineages of Homo species and populations co-existing in Asia, Africa, and Europe during that time,” Professor Stringer said. It is believed that Homo longi is a closer relative of Homo sapiens than Neanderthal. Researchers also believe that these findings can potentially rewrite the story of human evolution.