Re: Dragon Man skull identified as Denisovan by mitochondrial DNA from dental plague

On 6/20/2025 1:46 PM, RonO wrote:

https://www.science.org/content/article/dragon-man-skull-belongs- mysterious-human-relative
 Maybe the individual just ate Denisovans.
 Original news article from 2021.
 https://www.science.org/content/article/stunning-dragon-man-skull-may- be-elusive-denisovan-or-new-species-human
 The skull looks like a robust Neanderthal.  Sort of Homo erectus with a huge brain and a flatter face.
 Ron Okimoto
 

They are trying to make a big deal about the minor differences between this skull and the Neanderthal skulls, but this looks pretty much like a robust Neanderthal, my guess is that it falls within the variation already observed for Neanderthal skulls.  It is basically a larger version of the Peking Man skulls of Homo erectus found in China.  It just has a larger brain case.  At 1420 cc it is on the small side for Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon (1500 cc and 1600 cc, respectively).  Ice age Homo had larger brains, and it looks like we have had a reduction in brain size to modern times.
When I took anthropology in 1975 Jensen was being called a racist for his views on IQ at Berkeley, and people had to keep their heads down and down play population differences between modern humans.  Some Anthropologist was taking a lot of flack for noting that Australoids (Australia and New Guinea) had Homo erectus like skull features.  His views were claimed to be racist, but now we know that those features likely come from Denisovan interbreeding.
My guess is that the Australoid skull features that set them apart from the other human populations are due to the Denisovan genetics, and we will eventually figure this out.  Some Australoids have over 7% Denisovan DNA.
Ron Okimoto