Skippers declared Friday that a skull preserved almost completely in northeastern China for over 140,000 years is a new species of ancient people that is closer to us than even Neanderthals — and might drastically affect our view of human evolution.

It was a big-brained man in his 50s with deep eyes and thick sides of the brow. Although its face was wide, the flat, low cheekbones made it closer than other extinct members of the human family tree to seem like present individuals.

The research team connected the specimen with other fossil findings in the country and referred to the area where the species was identified as Homo longi, or Dragon Man.

First discovered in the city of the same name in 1933, Harbin skull was reported to have been buried for 85 years in a puits to safeguard against the Japanese forces.

He was subsequently pulled out and handed over to Hebei GEO University's Professor Ji Qiang in 2018.

"Our studies reveal a closer link between the Harbin group and the H. sapiens than the Neanderthals – Harbin shared with us a more recent progenitor than the New Thalers did," remarked Co-Author of the Natural History Museum of London Chris Stringer.

He predicted that Dragon Man would become our "sister species," a closer modern man's ancestry than neanderthals.

Three articles in the journal The Innovation published these results.

The skull has been in the middle Pleistocene for at least 146,000 years.

'The Harbin skull presents a mosaic blend of original, derived traits, which stands apart from all the other formerly designated Homo species, while it has typical archaic human features,' said Ji who was the conductor of the research.

The name comes from the Long Jiang, meaning "Dragon River" literally.

As part of a tiny community, Dragon Man was most likely to reside in a wooded floodplain setting.

"These people were hunter collectors surviving off the earth," Stringer added. It looks as if they coped with even harsher cold than the Neanderthals from today's winter temperature in Harbin."

Due to the location of the skull and the large man it means, the researchers think that H. longi could have been well suited for hostile conditions and could have spread across Asia.

The first study was conducted by researchers of cranium, which identified over 600 features in a computer model that performed millions of simulations to assess the evolution and interactions across species.

"These show that Harbin, along with H. sapiens, and several other fossils from China constitute a third lineage of later human beings," noted Stringer.

Other discoveries include a fossilized skull, considered to be 200,000 years old and discovered in 1978 from the Chinese region of Dali, and a jaw found in Tibet 160,000 years ago.

Stringer noted that the name of H. longi, which he described as a "wonderful name," was decided by his Chinese colleagues, but that he was also pleased to mention the species of H. daliensis used for the Dali skull before.

Several human species existed across Eurasia and Africa over 100,000 years ago, including our own Neanderthals and Denisovans, a sibling species recently discovered by Neanderthals. Could be added to that list now, "Dragon Man."

Alternatively, H. longi and Denisovans are actually identical. To date Denisovans have been attributed to fossils including teeth and artificial bones, but not a complete cranium.

The genetically near to each other, however, were Neanderthals and Denisovans, but the latest study indicates that H. longi were more anatomically similar to us than Neanderthals.

Therefore, future genetic sequencing may be necessary to clarify the continued confusion.