Scientists in the Philippines have this week published a paper on the discovery of a previously unknown species of ancient human.

The specimen, which has been named Homo luzonensis, was found in a cave on Luzon Island in The Philippines - and its discovery has thrown quite the curveball into our previous understanding of human evolution, as it is believed they coexisted with our ancestors.

The remains have been dated to 50,000-67,000 years ago, meaning that this species of human had existed outside of Africa (where our ancestors are believed to have dispersed from) possibly before early Homo sapiens had left the continent.

"We now know that it was a much more complex evolutionary history, with several distinct species contemporaneous with Homo sapiens, interbreeding events, extinctions," said Florent Détroit, one of the paper's authors. "Homo luzonensis is one of those species and we will [increasingly see] that a few thousand years back in time, Homo sapiens was definitely not alone on Earth."

The site did not produce an intact skeleton, but the remains that were found - seven teeth, two hand bones, three foot bones and one thigh bone - are believed to have belonged to two adults and one child, and yielded enough information for scientists to deduce some key information about Homo luzonensis.

The size of the teeth suggest that the early humans would have stood less than four feet in height, and the curved toe bones would indicate that they had an ability to walk upright on two legs, but also that they were adapted to climb trees.

"Maybe the way they were walking was distinct," said Détroit. "This is something we plan to work on in the near future."

Researchers have found that the remnants closely resemble another ancient species, Homo floresiensis (sometimes described as a "Hobbit"), which was also found in south-east Asia and believed to have lived around the same period.

As exciting as the discovery is for researchers, there are a number of questions and mysteries that remain unanswered on account of there being so little evidence to analyse. The most troubling one being: how did these ancient humans arrive on Luzon Island? The land is not believed to have ever been connected to the mainland, which suggests that the ancient species was somehow able to traverse the sea - either deliberately, by some sort of raft, or perhaps accidentally, by a tsunami or some other natural event.

"Arrival by accident … is favoured by many scholars, but this is mainly because of arguments like ‘Homo erectus were not clever enough to cross the sea on purpose,'" said Détroit. "But the fact is that we have now more and more evidence that they successfully settled on several islands in the remote past in south-east Asia, so it was probably not so accidental."

For many in the field, this discovery is not entirely surprising, however.

One scientist, Professor Chris Stringer, from the National History Museum, said: "After the remarkable finds of the diminutive Homo floresiensis were published in 2004, I said that the experiment in human evolution conducted on Flores could have been repeated on many of the other islands in the region.

"That speculation has seemingly been confirmed on the island of Luzon... nearly 3,000km away."

If these recent findings are any indication of what is yet to come, it could be that we are yet to discover key information about our origins as a species - and who knows where those realisations will take us.

Leg bones belonging to an extinct human species have been pulled from the sea floor off Taiwan and they belonged to individuals who stood up to 6ft 3in tall and weighed over 200 pounds.

The bones are Denisovan, a species of archaic human that lived across a vast stretch of Asia and interbred with Homo sapiens thousands of years ago.

Until now, almost everything known about them came from teeth, a few jaw fragments, and a single finger bone.

These are the first leg bones ever identified.

They change what scientists know about how big Denisovans actually were.

They are also, predictably, being used online as proof that the biblical Nephilim were real - this is the internet, after all.

What was found

A femur and a tibia, both recovered from sediment in the Penghu Channel off the coast of Taiwan.

Protein analysis published in the journal Science confirmed the bones belonged to the Denisovan lineage.

Two individuals are represented.

One stood roughly 5ft 11in and weighed about 183 pounds.

The other was approximately 6ft 3in and 200 pounds.

Both were larger than earlier Homo erectus and Late Pleistocene Homo sapiens found in eastern Asia, according to researchers cited by the European Research Council.

The study also suggests the Denisovan lineage more broadly had robust bodies and large brains.

Whether these two individuals were representative of the species as a whole, or whether they happened to be unusually large, is not yet known. More fossils are needed.

The research has not yet been peer-reviewed.

The biological sex of both individuals was inferred rather than directly confirmed.

The bones were found in the sea near Taiwan. Credit: University of Tokyo

Why the bones were on the sea floor

This is the part that sounds dramatic in a headline but has a perfectly ordinary explanation.

During glacial periods, sea levels were significantly lower than they are today.

Land that is now underwater was once exposed.

The bones ended up on what is now the sea floor because the ground they were originally deposited on is now beneath the Penghu Channel.

It is climate history and geology. It is not evidence of a biblical flood.

Althought that is definitely something that has been argued.

The Nephilim theory

Jimmy Corsetti, the YouTuber behind the Bright Insight channel, posted his interpretation of the discovery and connected the bones to the Nephilim, the giant figures described in the Hebrew Bible.

The Nephilim appear in Genesis 6:4 and Numbers 13:33. They are described as the offspring of divine beings and human women, sometimes translated as 'giants' or 'fallen ones'.

The first Book of Enoch expands on the story further. Mainstream biblical scholarship treats them as mythological.

Corsetti's argument is that the size of the Denisovan bones, combined with the fact that they were found on a sea floor, lines up with ancient accounts of giant beings who lived before a great flood.

The study's authors made no such connection.

The bones are large for an ancient human but not supernaturally so.

A 6ft 3in individual is tall, not a giant. There are people that height in every gym in America right now.

That said, there is something genuinely interesting buried in the speculation.

Ancient communities that encountered unusually large bones, whether Denisovan or otherwise, may well have built stories around them.

It is not difficult to imagine someone in the ancient world digging up a femur significantly larger than anything they had seen before and deciding it belonged to something more than human.

It could be the prehistoric equivalent of a Reddit thread spiraling into mythology.

But 'may have inspired myths' is not the same thing as 'proves myths were true'.

The Nephilim are biblical figures, not thought to be real. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Why the find actually matters

Denisovans are one of the most important pieces of the human story and until this week they were known from almost nothing.

A finger bone found in a Siberian cave in 2008. A jawbone from a cave on the Tibetan Plateau.

Teeth and fragments, but enough to know they existed and that they interbred with Homo sapiens, but not enough to know what they looked like below the neck.

These leg bones change that.

For the first time, scientists can estimate how tall Denisovans were, how heavy, how their bodies were built.

The genetic traces they left behind are still detectable in modern populations across Asia and the Pacific.

Parts of the Denisovan genome live on in people walking around today.

That is a story about real ancient humans whose DNA is still inside living people. It does not need the Nephilim to make it remarkable.

Featured image credit: University of Tokyo

As part of our seemingly never-ending quest to find out whether or not we're alone in the universe, us human beings have sometimes fallen into the trap of believing whatever we're told about so-called "alien life". One of the most prominent examples of this was a documentary made in 1995 that supposedly showed an "alien autopsy", and included testimonies from people who had apparently witnessed the crash-landing of a spaceship decades earlier.

Unsurprisingly, it later turned out to be a fake.

Now, another suspect video has emerged - and this one claims that scientists have found the mummified remains of a creature that is "not human". But how legitimate is it?

In the clip, which is available to view on YouTube, people appear to be examining a humanoid creature with three fingers on each hand and three toes on each foot. It has seemingly normal arms and legs and is pretty much proportional to a standard human being - albeit with much larger eye sockets than average.

"They appear human but they are not. Their anatomic structure is different," says Russian National Research University professor Konstantin Korotkov, who seems to be implying that the subject is legitimate. "Right now we are making a detailed analysis to see if the shape of the position of all the chromosomes, of all the amino acids, coincides with ours."

And it's not so hard to believe that this subject could be a real (but deformed) human being, as similar mummified bodies have been found in Peru, often in the same folded-up pose.

However, other people aren't convinced of the skeleton's authenticity.

Nigel Watson, the author of the UFO Investigations Manual isn't buying the mummy at all and believes the whole thing is a money-grabbing fake.

"I think the whole saga of finding these mummies is laughable and they are very probably fakes," he said. "The new evidence does indicate the Maria is human, the only strange thing is that she has an unusual rib structure. This is probably because she is a so-called bone montage made by fakers."

The fake could have been made deliberately for the documentary, or it could have been made as a joke and then was discovered by filmmakers who had no idea it wasn't real. Some have theorized that it was made some time ago as a tourist attraction, but it's also possible that it was assembled originally from human and animal parts, and has become naturally mummified over time.

"Those involved in ‘scientifically’ examining the mummies seem to believe they are ancient aliens, but they are suffering from the wish to believe," Watson added.

"It also doesn’t look good that this Earth-shattering news was originally fed to us via a website you have to subscribe to, rather than through officially recognized scientific channels," the author said. "At the end of the day, this is fake news delivered in a slick fashion to indulge our fascination with ancient aliens and UFOs."

So, once again, it seems that the internet has been conned by a few people who wanted to test the limits of human gullibility. Or, you know, maybe we haven't, and this could still turn out to be the real thing. But I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you.

Another day, another prediction of when humans will be wiped off of the face of the Earth.

In fairness, if you keep predicting, it will probably be correct one day.

I think we should all give ourselves a pat on the back for how many supposed apocalyptic events we've lived through.

2012 is probably the biggest one that comes to mind, but I also remember sitting in school one day absolutely convinced that the Large Hadron Collider was going to destroy the Earth.

And yet, as a species, we persist... for now.

At the University of Bristol, researchers have recently unveiled a startling revelation about the eventual fate of life on our planet, per LBC.

Utilizing a supercomputer to analyze geological and atmospheric data, their findings point toward a dramatic conclusion: the formation of a colossal supercontinent that will reshape the Earth as we know it.

Dubbed Pangea Ultima, this future landmass is envisioned as the culmination of millennia of tectonic movement, where continents merge to form a singular entity.

Dr. Alexander Farnsworth, a member of the research team, explained the implications of this discovery, stating: "The newly-emerged supercontinent would effectively create a triple whammy, comprising the continentality effect, hotter sun, and more CO2 in the atmosphere, of increasing heat for much of the planet."

The envisioned landscape of Pangea Ultima paints a grim picture of scorching temperatures and inhospitable conditions.

With average temperatures projected to soar between 40 and 50 degrees Celsius, coupled with high humidity levels, life as we know it would face unprecedented challenges.

The ability to regulate body temperature through sweating, a fundamental mechanism for mammals, would be heavily impacted.

Despite the dire forecast, the study suggests that a fraction of Pangea Ultima's landmass - estimated between eight and 16 percent - could potentially sustain life.

But even those areas wouldn't be comfortable to live in.

In short, it's going to get very hot and we won't be able to survive it.

The convergence of tectonic plates could trigger a surge in volcanic activity, further complicating the environmental landscape.

The formation of new, massive volcanoes could certainly make things a lot worse than they already are.

Don't worry, all of this probably won't impact you unless you've found the fountain of youth.

The projected timeline for these events extends over the course of 250 million years. This vast timeframe offers humanity ample opportunity to prepare and adapt. 

You'd hope that with Elon Musk wanting to colonize Mars right now, we'd have it sorted in 250 million years.

But for now, let's just do our bit to keep the planet as hospitable as we can!

Featured image credit: aryos/Getty