In 2021, Chinese paleoanthropologist Qiang Ji and colleagues erected a new species, Homo longi, based on a late Middle Pleistocene skull from Harbin in northeastern China. They suggested Denisovans may belong to H. longi, but excluded Dali Man and contemporaneous East Asian specimens. They instead recommended reviving H. daliensis to accommodate these specimens. In a study published the same day, Israeli anthropologist Israel Hershkovitz and colleagues suggested the apparent diversity of supposedly unique forms during the Middle Pleistocene is the result of a complex network of cross-continental interbreeding, based on the 140 to 120 thousand years old Israeli Nesher Ramla remains which feature a mix of Neanderthal and H. erectus traits.
