Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:A skull discovered in 2021 nicknamed “Dragon Man” has been identified as belonging to a group of early hominins known as Denisovans.Evidence of Denisovans was only discovered for the first time in 2008, and analysis has since shown traces of Denisovan DNA in modern humans.This new discovery, however, is not without controversy, with some questioning what it means for how we categorize early homo sapiens.This story is a collaboration with Biography.comFinally, after years of study, the real identity of the Dragon Man has been discovered.That might sound like something shouted by the villain in the pages of a comic book, but in fact, it is a very real archeological breakthrough—one that helps reshape our understanding of the early hominins who once roamed the earth, and whose DNA can still be found mixed in with our own. As National Geographic reports, a skull discovered in northern China had, for several years, been suggested to belong to a previously undiscovered species, which had been labeled Homo longi (named for the discovery’s proximity to the Long Jiang, or Long River). As the river’s Chinese name 龙江 literally translates to ‘Dragon River,’ they nicknamed the discovered skull “Dragon Man.”Now, the species that skull belongs to has been properly identified, and the Dragon Man has officially been determined to be the first-ever example of the extinct Denisovan lineage. Qiaomei Fu, a paleogeneticist from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, obtained a DNA sample from the skull, and managed to determine the prehistoric species to which “Dragon Man” belonged. In fact, she been part of the team that discovered it:“Back in 2010, she’d been the first to investigate the DNA from a tiny finger bone found in a Siberian cave called Denisova that became world famous because it revealed the existence of a population of hominins not previously known to science, and for which no other fossils existed: the Denisovans.”Since the announcement of the discovery of Denisovans more than a decade ago, the interests and imaginations of the scientific and archaeological communities have been lit ablaze. In the intervening years, evidence of cross-breeding between Neanderthals and Denisovans has come to light, a Denisovan jawbone was found in the Penghu Channel of Taiwan (suggesting their migratory patterns), and we’ve even found elements of Denisovan DNA passed on to the majority of modern populations. In 2019, researchers tried to use a techique called DNA hypermethylation to try and reconstruct what the Denisovan skeletal structure might have looked like, per a study published in the journal Cell. But now, finally, there’s a real, intact skull which can be not only observed, but compared to other specimens, allowing scientists the opportunity to analyze similarities and study how adaptation may have effected the development of various traits.The current findings regarding Dragon Man’s Denisovan origins appear in two papers, published in the journals Science and Cell, respectively. These papers also detail the methodology employed to make this genetic link—after all, bones this old hardly offer a bevy of organic biological material ripe for analysis. Fu looked to the petrous bone, a “dense part of the skull near the inner ear that is known to be the last spot where DNA might survive in a skull that is estimated to be at least 146,000 years old” for genetic material her team could use to draw connections, but to no avail.So, the team shifted their focus from DNA to protein. Proteins have a higher likelihood of surviving on ancient bones than more complex DNA structures—even surviving in fossilized material otherwise bereft of their original biological material (exemplified by bone collagen found on a fossilized dinosaur earlier this year). Fu was able to collect information from 95 different proteins on the skull, “four of which are known to differ between Denisovans and other hominins.” Of those, three matched the Denisovan variant.But Fu wanted to look even further in the hopes of finding a DNA sample, and so turned to the dental plaque on the single tooth that remained in the skull. As National Geographic notes:“It was a long shot: while plaque is a very hardy material, researchers more typically find bacterial DNA in it. It’s rarer to find the DNA of the owner of the teeth. Against expectations, she did find a tiny amount of DNA there that was human and looked sufficiently old to have belonged to the skull itself, and not one of the people who have handled it since.”This, however, does present the first minor controversy involved with this discovery: not everyone is convinced of the validity of that dental DNA sample. While many have come out in favor of the ultimate conclusion of the study, National Geographic did speak to paleoanthropologist Xijun Ni, who was involved with the original Homo longinus identification, but not with the currently published Denisovan papers. Ni suggested that Fu’s team “may have actually recovered many DNA fragments from me because I studied and handled the specimens so many times.”Fu conceded that a “substantial” amount of biological material found on the skull did demonstrably come from contamination, but noted that the material they analyzed was carefully chosen only when it was clearly ancient in origin. What they analyzed “contains 27 gene variants only found in the seven known Denisovan individuals,” Fu told National Geographic. “None of these can arise from modern human contamination.”But this discovery did prompt another controversy—not one of analytical discrepancy, but one of nomenclature. As National Geographic summarizes: “These results provoke an unsettled question: Since Denisovans have never been formally described as a species, but Homo longi has, should we now refer to Denisovans as Homo longi?”Some, like Ni, suggest that if the specimen dubbed Homo longi is the most substantial skeletal remnants of a Denisovan, than the species name should be carried over to all Denisovans.But others take issue with such a swift and broad categorization. “We ourselves do not use species names for Neandertals or Denisovans,” notes paleogeneticist Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthrology in National Geographic’s coverage. “We do not find it helpful as these are closely related groups that have been shown to mix and have fertile offspring, with each other and with our own direct ancestors. But if a species name is needed, we would simply call them all Homo sapiens.”A naming debate might seem trivial, compared to what this discovery might mean for our understanding of the Denisovans and the world they inhabited. But it is an illustration of the complicated, contemporary issues that come into play, even when trying to understand humanity’s most ancient history. Denisovans, like Neanderthals, are often categorized as an “other”—as an extinct alternative to the ancient humans from which we modern day people descended.But more and more evidence has emerged to suggest interbreeding between these peoples, and traces of their DNA are still present in many modern humans. So, the categorization debate has as much to do with fitting the past into our contemporary understandings of humanity as it does trying to understand the ancient world as it was.The skull of the “Dragon Man” offers a rare window into the past—an opportunity to glean information about period otherwise lost to the ravages of time. But deciding what we do with that information is a very modern problem indeed.