Denisovans

Most Famous Specimens:

Denisova Cave, northern Siberia (finger bone, three teeth, small skull and limb fragments)

Tibetan Plateau (partial jaw, dated to about 160 tya)

Location:

central and eastern Eurasia

Time Range:

200?-50? tya

The known time range of any fossil form depends on the specimens available and accuracy with which they can be dated. As more material becomes available, estimated dates often change.

Skeletal Features:

sloping chin and dense skeletal bone is reminiscent of Neanderthals, but finger bones are reminiscent of modern humans.

Habitats:

Steppe; possibly others.

Special Notes:

No agreement exists about the classification of this form. It has sometimes been given the provisional biological names Homo denisova, Homo altaiensis, or Homo sapiens denisova.

Denisovan remains preserved enough DNA to generate several surprising discoveries, some more widely accepted than others. There is broad consensus that:

1. Denisovans appar to have shared a common ancestor with Neanderthals sometime between 600 and 700 tya
2. There was some genetic exchange with Neanderthals in western Eurasia.
3. There was more genetic exchange with early modern sapiens in eastern Eurasia, and some probable Denisovan genes remain in modern populations of China, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea.

Wikipedia link

Denisovan Jaw
(Photo by ZHANG Dongju, Lanzhou University,
in Science News, 196(11):27 (2019-12-21/2020-01-04)

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