To be or not to be (a species)?
Kia ora, In my last post to this blog I wrote a bit about the Harbin skull, a remarkable fossil find made more than 80 years ago in the city of Harbin in China's Heilongjiang province and that was first announced to the scientific community last year in three papers published in the same issue of the scientific journal 'The Innovation' ( Qiang Ji et al. 2021 ; Qingfeng Shao et al. 2021 ; Xijun Ni et al. 2021 ) . The cranium is almost complete, but with only one tooth - a huge second molar - and is massive in size, with an endocranial volume of about 1420 ml (larger than the average for modern Homo sapiens - our own species !). Other morphological traits include a prominent supraorbital torus (brow ridge), a very broad (wide) yet orthognathic (flat) face with large, almost square eye sockets, a large nasal opening and delicate zygomatic (cheek) bones, and a cranial vault that is low and elongated when viewed side on...