A team led by Chinese scientists says it has found the remains of a new human species that lived in Asia at least 146,000 years ago and would be the closest evolutionary relative to Homo sapiens, our own species.

Researchers have named him Homo longi, dragon man, after the name of the region in northeastern China where the fossil skull was found. Analysis of this skull suggests that it was a man in his 50s, probably tall and strong. This human was a kind of Frankenstein with primitive and modern features: a flattened head, thick arches over the eyebrows, a wide mouth, and teeth far larger than those of any...