This skull may look ordinary, but it’s far from it. Discovered in China’s Hubei Province, Yunxian 2 lay hidden for a million years. At first, scientists classified it as Homo erectus, but deeper analysis showed it actually belonged to Homo longi—a species that could push the timeline of modern humans back by half a million years. For nearly a million years, early humans, Neanderthals, and their kin lived side by side, influencing one another’s evolution. Reported in Science, the discovery challe