150,000-year-old fossil reveals multiple human species coexisted in ancient China

Beneath the loess of northern China, two distinct human lineages once shared the same ancient landscape — a discovery that quietly dismantles the long-held image of human evolution as a single, orderly procession. A newly dated fossil places Homo juluensis between 138,000 and 228,000 years ago, overlapping almost precisely with the presence of Homo longi, the so-called Dragon Man, in the same region. The finding, published in Quaternary Science Reviews, suggests that East Asia during the Middle Pleistocene was not a corridor of succession but a living mosaic of human diversity — a reminder tha