"Dragon man" prompts rethinking of Middle Pleistocene hominin systematics in Asia

Chibanian (Middle Pleistocene) hominin fossils that could not be easily assigned to Homo erectus, H. neanderthalensis, or H. sapiens have traditionally been assigned to an all-inclusive group: "archaic H. sapiens." In an insightful observation of the Chibanian record almost four decades ago however, Tattersall railed against the use of the word "archaic" in this sense when referring to the human fossil record, as he justifiably noted that no other biological organism has the word "archaic" attached to it.¹ For example, no one refers to an earlier version of Canis domesticus as "archaic" C. domesticus. The ancestor of the domestic dog is, and always has been, considered to be C. lupus. In Tattersall's opinion, it would seem that these "archaic H. sapiens" fossils should be assigned to one or more formal taxonomic names. As such, terms such as "archaic H. sapiens," "mid-Pleistocene Homo," and "Middle Pleistocene Homo" have always been considered to be wastebasket taxa that include way too much morphological variability for one proposed taxonomic group. Continuing to use wastebasket taxa only hinders any attempts to understand true phylogenetic and evolutionary relationships.