Follow Us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter The enigmatic and now extinct Denisovans of China shared traits with Neanderthals, modern humans and Homo erectus, according to a new study that analyzed ancient proteins and fossils. But Denisovans also had several unique cranial traits and genetic variants that made them a distinctive ancient human group, according to researchers, and these traits have now revealed a new face for a Denisovan man. In the study, published Oct. 21 in the journal Nature, researchers analyzed Denisovan skulls from the Xujiayao archaeological site in northern China. The Denisovans were a group of ancient humans who lived in Asia and disappeared about 30,000 years ago. This human relative was first identified in 2010 from DNA from a finger bone discovered in a cave in Siberia. The Xujiayao bones and teeth were excavated in the late 1970s, long before scientists knew of the existence of Denisovans, and were initially thought to be Neanderthals or archaic Homo sapiens due to the shape of the fossils and their age: between 138,000 and 199,000 years old. From Live Science But recent advances in paleoproteomics (the study of proteins in bones and teeth that persist longer than DNA) have helped researchers identify Denisovan individuals because of specific genetic variants that differentiate them from other ancient human groups. In the new study, the researchers used paleoproteomic analyzes on 20 remains from Xujaiyao and determined that all of them were Denisovans. This determination allowed researchers to closely study the skull bones and discover what Denisovans might have been like. You may like The Xujiayao skulls had some features similar to those of H. erectus, the researchers wrote, including a low, wide brain case and thick cranial bones. But they also had anatomical features more similar to those of Neanderthals and modern humans, particularly in their premolars (the teeth between the canines and molars). The researchers also identified some unique cranial features of Denisova. The back of the skull, for example, was more vertical and less rounded than in Neanderthals or modern humans. Armed with a better understanding of the shape of the Denisova skull from the Xujiayao fossils, the researchers compared them to East Asian Denisova remains that some experts have assigned to other species, such as Homo juluensis and Homo longi. But the researchers identified similarities that may prevent dividing Denisovans into different species. Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. “This unique combination of morphological traits, distinct from H. erectus, modern humans, and hominids of the Neanderthal lineage, supports the assignment of most members of archaic Homo from the late Middle Pleistocene of eastern Asia as Denisovans,” they wrote in the study. This means that the Denisovans may have been a human lineage that adapted to diverse ecological zones in Asia for hundreds of thousands of years. “It is still possible that other lineages existed in East Asia during the time when Denisovans are known to have existed,” study co-author Qiaomei Fu, director of the Ancient DNA Laboratory at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Live Science in an email. “We know from DNA that Denisovans were a very genetically varied group, who split early into different populations,” Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London who was not involved in the research, told LiveScience in an email. “These could have developed a lot of morphological variation, which may well surprise us as the fossil sample grows.” The researchers also produced a new reconstruction of what a Denisova man might have looked like. An earlier DNA study suggested that Denisovans probably had dark skin, brown hair and brown eyes. The new reconstruction shows the Denisovan looking directly at the viewer, with his low, wide skull mostly obscured by dark hair flowing back from the enormous arch of his forehead. There are clear similarities between Denisovan man and Neanderthals, as well as modern humans, but the Denisovan has a different face. Xing, S., Wu, Z., Shao, Q., Ge, J., Bennett, EA, Rao, H., Lin, S., Zhao, Y., Liu, F., Liu, Y., Zhou, K., Feng, The proteome of the Middle Pleistocene Xujiayao and the common morphology of Denisova. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11132-z See how much you know about early humans with our human evolution quiz!
