科学家发现新古代人类物种“龙人”
Discovery of ‘Dragon Man’ Skull in China May Add Species to Human Family Tree
CARL ZIMMER
2021年6月28日
Scientists on Friday announced that a massive fossilized skull that is at least 140,000 years old is a new species of ancient human, a finding that could potentially change prevailing views of how — and even where — our species, Homo sapiens, evolved.
科学家周五宣布，一个至少有14万年历史的巨大头骨化石属于新的古代人类物种，这一发现可能会改变人类对我们智人如何进化——乃至在哪里进化——的普遍看法。
The skull belonged to a mature male who had a huge brain, massive brow ridges, deep set eyes and a bulbous nose. It had remained hidden in an abandoned well for 85 years, after a laborer came across it at a construction site in China.
该头骨属于一个成熟男性，他的脑部硕大、眉脊高耸、眼眶深陷，有一个圆鼓鼓的鼻子。一名工人在中国的一个建筑工地偶然发现了它，将它一直藏在废弃的井中长达85年。
The researchers named the new species Homo longi and gave it the nickname “Dragon Man,” for the Dragon River region of northeast China where the skull was discovered.
研究人员将这个新物种命名为“Homo longi”，并给它起了个绰号“龙人”(Dragon Man)，取自发现头骨的中国东北黑龙江地区。
The team said that Homo longi, and not the Neanderthals, was the extinct human species mostly closely related to our own. If confirmed, that would change how scientists envision the origin of Homo sapiens, which has been built up over the years from fossil discoveries and the analysis of ancient DNA.
研究小组表示，与我们人类亲缘关系最密切的已灭绝人类物种不是尼安德特人，而是龙人。如果得到证实，这将改变科学家对智人起源的看法，智人的起源是多年来通过化石发现和古代DNA分析建立起来的。
But a number of experts disputed this conclusion, published in three papers that provided the first detailed look at the fossil. Nevertheless, many still thought that the find could help scientists reconstruct the human family tree and how modern humans emerged.
该结论发表在三篇首次对化石进行了详细研究的论文中，许多专家对这一结论提出异议。尽管如此，许多人仍然认为这一发现可以帮助科学家重建人类家谱并再现现代人类是如何出现的。
All the experts who reviewed the data in the studies said it was a magnificent fossil.
所有审查过该研究的数据的专家均表示，这是一块意义非凡的化石。
“It’s a beautiful thing,” said John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s very rare to find a fossil like this, with a face in good condition. You dream of finding this stuff.”
“它很美，”威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校(University of Wisconsin-Madison)的古人类学家约翰·霍克斯(John Hawks)说。“这样的化石非常罕见，面部状况良好。你做梦都想要找到这样的东西。”
In 1933, a laborer working at a bridge construction site in the city of Harbin discovered the peculiar skull. It’s likely that the man — whose name has been withheld by his family — recognized that he had found a scientifically important specimen. Just four years earlier, researchers had found another humanlike skull, nicknamed Peking Man, near Beijing. It appeared to link the people of Asia to their evolutionary forerunners.
1933年，哈尔滨市桥梁工地的一名工人发现了这个奇特的头骨。这名男子——其家人拒绝公布他的姓名——很可能意识到他发现了一个具有科学意义的标本。在那四年前，研究人员刚刚在北京附近发现了另一个人形头骨，别称“北京人”。它似乎将亚洲人与他们的进化史上的祖先联系起来。
Rather than hand over the new skull to the Japanese authorities who occupied northeast China at the time, the laborer chose to hide it. He did not mention the skull to anyone for decades. In an account of the fossil’s discovery, the authors of the new papers speculated that he was ashamed of having worked for the Japanese.
这名工人没有将新头骨交给当时占领中国东北的日本当局，而是选择将其藏起来。几十年来，他没有向任何人提及该头骨。在对化石发现过程的描述中，新论文的作者推测，为日本人工作令他感到羞耻。
Shortly before his death in 2018, the laborer told his family about the fossil. They went to the well and found it. The family donated it to the Geoscience Museum of Hebei GEO University, where scientists immediately could see that it had been exquisitely well preserved.
在2018年去世前不久，这位工人将化石的事情告诉了他的家人。他们在井中找到了化石。全家人将其捐赠给了河北地质大学地球科学博物馆，在那里科学家一眼就看出这是一个保存完好的化石。
In the papers published Friday, the researchers argued that Homo longi appears to have been an adult of great size. His cheeks were flat and his mouth broad. The lower jaw is missing, but the researchers infer from the Dragon Man’s upper jaw and other fossil human skulls that he likely lacked a chin. They say that his brain was about 7 percent larger than the average brain of a living human.
在周五发表的论文中，研究人员认为龙人似乎是一个体型巨大的成年人。他的脸颊平坦，嘴巴宽阔。没有下颌骨，但研究人员对比龙人的上颌和其他人类头骨化石推断出下巴可能缺失。他们说他的大脑比现代人的平均大脑大了约7%。
The researchers argue that Dragon Man’s combination of anatomical features are found in no previously named species of hominin, the lineage of bipedal apes that diverged from other African apes. They later evolved into larger-brained species that set the stage for Homo sapiens to expand across the entire globe.
研究人员认为，龙人的综合解剖特征是以前已发现的人族下的物种所没有的，人族是从其他非洲猿中分化出来的双足猿的谱系。它们后来进化成大脑更大的物种，为智人在全球范围内的广泛分布奠定了基础。
“It’s distinctive enough to be a different species,” said Christopher Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London and co-author of two of the three Dragon Man papers.
“它的特别之处使其足以成为一个不同的物种，”伦敦自然历史博物馆(Natural History Museum)的古人类学家、三篇龙人论文中两篇的合著者克里斯托弗·斯金格(Christopher Stringer)说。
The scientists analyzed the chemical composition of the fossil, and determined it was at least 146,000 years old, but no older than 309,000 years.
科学家们分析了化石的化学成分，确定它至少有14.6万年的历史，但不超过30.9万年。
Today, the planet is home to just one species of hominin — Homo sapiens. But Dragon Man existed at a time when a number of drastically different kinds of hominins coexisted, including Homo erectus — a tall human with a brain two-thirds the size of our own — as well as tiny hominins including Homo naledi in South Africa, Homo floresiensis in Indonesia and Homo luzonensis in the Philippines.
今天，地球上的人族动物只有一个人种——智人。但是龙人存在的时候，许多完全不同的人类共存，包括直立人——大脑容量是我们的三分之二的高大人类——以及包括南非的纳莱迪人、印度尼西亚的佛罗勒斯人和菲律宾的吕宋人在内的小体型人类。
The oldest Homo sapiens fossils also date to this time. Neanderthals — which shared our large brain and sophisticated toolmaking — ranged from Europe to Central Asia during the period when Dragon Man may have lived.
最古老的智人化石也可以追溯到这个时期。在龙人可能生活的时期，从欧洲到中亚都分布着与我们一样拥有庞大的大脑和复杂的工具制造能力的尼安德特人。
In recent years, studies of fossil DNA have also revealed yet another humanlike lineage in this period, the Denisovans. The DNA came largely from isolated teeth, chipped bones and even dirt. Those remains are not enough to show us what Denisovans looked like.
近年来，对化石DNA的研究还揭示了这一时期的另一个类人谱系，即丹尼索瓦人。其DNA主要来自散落的牙齿、碎骨甚至污垢。这些遗骸不足以向我们展示丹尼索瓦人的样子。
The most promising fossil yet found that could be evidence of Denisovans came from a cave in Tibet: a massive jaw with two stout molars, dating back at least 160,000 years. In 2019, scientists isolated proteins from the jaw, and their molecular makeup suggests they belonged to a Denisovan, rather than a modern human or Neanderthal.
迄今为止发现的最有希望能够证实丹尼索瓦人的化石来自西藏的一个洞穴：一个巨大的带有两颗粗大臼齿的下巴，至少可以追溯到16万年前。2019年，科学家从下巴中分离出蛋白质，它们的分子构成表明它们属于丹尼索瓦人，而不是现代人或尼安德特人。
This molecular evidence — combined with fossil evidence — suggests that the common ancestors of Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans lived 600,000 years ago.
这一分子证据——结合化石证据——表明智人、尼安德特人和丹尼索瓦人的共同祖先生活在60万年前。
Our lineage split off on its own, and then 400,000 years ago, Neanderthals and Denisovans diverged. In other words, Neanderthals and Denisovans were our closest extinct relatives. They even interbred with the ancestors of modern humans, and we carry bits of their DNA today.
我们的世系自行分离，然后在40万年前，尼安德特人和丹尼索瓦人分道扬镳。换句话说，尼安德特人和丹尼索瓦人是我们已灭绝的近亲。他们甚至与现代人类的祖先杂交，我们身上今天还携带着他们的DNA片段。
To figure out how Homo longi fits into the human family tree, the scientists compared its anatomy with 54 hominin fossils. The researchers found that it belongs to a lineage that includes the jaw in Tibet that has been identified as a Denisovan.
为了明确“龙人”是如何融入人类家谱的，科学家们将其解剖结构与54块古人类化石进行了比较。研究人员发现，它属于西藏的那个下颌所在的谱系，该谱系已被确定为丹尼索瓦人。
The skull was even more similar to a portion of a skull discovered in 1978 in the Chinese county of Dali, dating back 200,000 years. Some researchers thought the Dali fossil was of our own species, while others thought it belonged to an older lineage. Still others even called the fossil a new species, Homo daliensis.
这个头骨与1978年在中国大荔县发现的头骨的一部分更加相似，可以追溯到20万年前。一些研究人员认为，大荔发现的人类化石跟我们属于同一个物种，但也有人认为，它属于一个更古老的世系。还有人甚至称之为新物种，即大荔人。
The authors of the new studies argue that Dragon Man, the Tibetan jaw and the Dali skull all belong to a single lineage — one that is the closest branch to our own species. While Homo longi had distinctive features, it also shared traits with us, such as a flat face tucked under its brow rather than jutting out, as was the case with Neanderthals.
这篇新研究论文的作者认为，龙人、西藏发现的下颌和大荔人属于同一个世系——与我们自己的物种最接近的一个分支。虽然龙人有独特的特征，但与我们也有一些共同特征，比如脑门下方的脸是后缩的，而不是像尼安德特人那样前突。
“It is widely believed that the Neanderthal belongs to an extinct lineage that is the closest relative of our own species. However, our discovery suggests that the new lineage we identified that includes Homo longi is the actual sister group of H. sapiens,” Xijun Ni, a co-author of the studies and a paleoanthropologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Hebei GEO University said in a news release.
“人们原来普遍认为，已经灭绝的尼安德特人是我们智人最近的亲属，现在我们的分析发现，实际上‘龙人’所在的新支系跟智人的关系更近，”该论文的合著者、中国科学院和河北地质大学的古人类学家倪喜军在一份新闻稿中说。
Those conclusions are spurring debate among paleoanthropologists — including the authors of the new papers.
这些结论激起了古人类学家之间的争论——包括这些新论文的作者。
“When I first saw the picture of the fossil I thought, now we finally know what Denisovans looked like,” said Philipp Gunz, a paleoanthropologist at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
德国莱比锡马克斯·普朗克进化人类学研究所(Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology)的古人类学家菲利普·冈茨(Philipp Gunz)说：“当我第一次看到化石的照片时，我想，现在我们终于知道丹尼索瓦人长什么样了。”
Karen Baab, a paleoanthropologist at Midwestern University in Arizona, agreed: “Harbin is better understood as a Denisovan.”
亚利桑那州中西部大学(Midwestern University)的古人类学家凯伦·巴布(Karen Baab)对此表示赞同：“哈尔滨的‘龙人’还是理解为丹尼索瓦人更好。”
An assortment of clues point that way. The tooth on Dragon Man’s upper jaw has the same massive shape as the one on the Denisovan jaw found in Tibet, for example. Both lack a third molar. Dragon Man also lived in Asia at the same time that Denisovan DNA tells us that they were in the same place.
各种线索都指向这个方向。例如，龙人上颚的牙齿与在西藏发现的丹尼索瓦人下颚的牙齿具有相同的巨大形状。两者都缺少第三颗臼齿。龙人也生活在同时代的亚洲，丹尼索瓦人的DNA告诉我们，他们生活在同一个地方。
Even if Dragon Man is a Denisovan, there would be more puzzles to solve. The DNA of Denisovans clearly shows that their closest cousins were Neanderthals. The new study, based instead on fossil anatomy, indicates instead that Homo longi and Homo sapiens are more closely related to each other than to Neanderthals.
即使龙人是丹尼索瓦人，也还是有更多谜题需要解决。丹尼索瓦人的DNA清楚地表明，他们最近的表亲是尼安德特人。这项基于化石解剖学的新研究表明，与尼安德特人相比，龙人和智人之间的关系更为密切。
“I think that the genetic data in this case is more reliable than the morphological data,” said Bence Viola, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Toronto, who was not involved in the new study.
多伦多大学(University Of Toronto)古人类学家本斯·维奥拉(Bence Viola)说，“我认为这种情况下，基因数据比形态学数据更可靠。”维奥拉没有参与这项新研究。
