A jawbone found in a cave on the Tibetan Plateau in China is providing surprising insights into Denisovans, the enigmatic extinct cousins to Neanderthals and our own species, including that they were pioneers at enduring high-altitude environments.
Scientists on Wednesday described the pivotal new fossil: the right half of the lower jaw of an adolescent, including two teeth, dating from 160 000 years ago.
The only previously known Denisovan fossils were three teeth and some bone fragments unearthed 2.400 kilometre away in Siberia at a site called Denisova cave.
The Chinese fossil, found by a Buddhist monk in 1980 in China’s Xiahe county and later turned over to scientists, revealed intriguing details about the geographic spread of Denisovans, their physical appearance and their unexpected ability to conquer extreme environments.
The fossil from Baishiya Karst cave, situated 3.280 meters above sea level, showed not only that Denisovans once were widely distributed in eastern Eurasia but also that they inhabited an inhospitable high-altitude, low-oxygen setting.
“It must have been really tough to live there as a hunter-gatherer, and still they managed to be there,” said University of Copenhagen molecular anthropologist Frido Welker, one of the researchers in the study published in the journal Nature.
