Learning more about ancient humans is important if we are to understand the origins of humanity. That’s why it’s always so exciting when scientists find ancient human skulls hidden among fossilized remains. An ancient human skull found in China has baffled scientists around the world. It does not correspond to any known human species.

The skull was discovered by an international team of scientists who described it as “unlike any other hominin found before.” science alert. The skull has a longer crest and is unlike any other ancient human skull we’ve found in the past, such as Neanderthals, an example of which you can see in the main image of the article above.

These new bones are now designated HLD 6 and were discovered in Hualundong (East Asia) in 2019. Since then, scientists have tried to link ancient human skulls and bones to one of the already known ancient human lineages, but without success.

Its facial structure is similar to that of the modern human lineage, which is thought to have split from Homo erectus 750,000 years ago. But the similarities end there. The new discovery is believed to reveal a previously unknown lineage between modern humans and Denisovans that split from Neanderthals about 400,000 years ago.

Of course, all this could change as we learn more about bone structure and more fossils are discovered. Unfortunately, hominin fossils found in China often don’t fit easily into a particular lineage, so scientists certainly have a lot of work to do before we can definitively say where this ancient fossil is in human history.