EARTH, Laniakea Supercluster—An ancient crushed skull known as Dragon Man was an evolutionary enigma, but emergent evidence through digital wizardry reconstruction now suggests this ancient human lineage stretches back far deeper in time than scientists ever imagined.

Unearthed more than three decades ago from a riverbank in central China, the cranium was recently analyzed by a team of international researchers who concluded that the divergence between Homo sapiens and their closest evolutionary relatives occurred at least 400,000 years earlier than previously established—a finding that would essentially double the timeline of human origins.

The skull, known as Yunxian 2, was discovered in 1990 in the Yunyang district of Hubei province but had remained difficult to classify due to severe damage from fossilization. Scientists applied CT scanning and sophisticated virtual modeling to piece together its original form, revealing a surprising blend of primitive and advanced anatomical features.

The findings, published in the journal Science in September, propose that modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans began diverging from a common ancestor approximately 1.3 million years ago. Previous genetic studies gauged it instead at roughly 500,000 to 700,000 before modern day, placing Earthlings early development to Africa.

"This changes a lot of thinking because it suggests that by one million years ago our ancestors had already split into distinct groups, pointing to a much earlier and more complex human evolutionary split than previously believed," said Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at London's Natural History Museum and study co-author, told CNN.

The research places the skull within the lineage of Homo longi, a species linked to the mysterious Denisovans, an ancient human population known primarily from DNA extracted from fragmentary remains. If confirmed, the analysis would establish Denisovans, rather than Neanderthals, as modern humans' closest evolutionary relatives.

But for ancient alien theorists wondering if the so-called “Dragon Man” nickname was a nod to some sort of reptilian relative, it has nothing to do with the skull's appearance. The name is derived from the Long Jiang, or Dragon River, in the Heilongjiang province of China where the first skull designated Homo longi was discovered.

Still, the discovery challenges long-held assumptions about Africa as the sole crucible of human evolution.

Not all experts are convinced by the study's sweeping conclusions. Ryan McRae, a paleoanthropologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, told CNN that while the skull reconstruction appeared sound, the researchers may have overreached with their evolutionary timeline analysis, working with data too limited to support such dramatic revisions.

Svante Pääbo, the Nobel Prize-winning geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, suggested to The Washington Post that only the recovery of ancient DNA or proteins from the specimen could definitively confirm its place in the human family tree.

Stringer acknowledged the skepticism but noted that East Asia is increasingly proving essential to understanding human evolution. The researchers plan to conduct additional analyses incorporating fossils from Africa and elsewhere to refine their conclusions.

A third skull discovered at the same Chinese site in 2022 may provide further evidence, though it has not yet been formally described in scientific literature.

If nothing else, Dragon Man confirmed what family reunions drunken revelations have long suggested: a person’s ancestry can be far more complicated than you know.