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We’ve had a Denisovan skull since the 1930s, only nobody knew
After years of mystery, we now know what at least one Denisovan looked like.
Paleoanthropologist Qiang Ji, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and colleagues tried to sequence ancient DNA from several samples of the Harbin skull’s bone and its one remaining tooth, but they had no luck. Proteins tend to be hardier molecules than DNA, though, and in samples from the skull’s temporal bone (the ones on the sides of the head, just behind the cheekbones), the researchers struck pay dirt. The paper's authors argued that their Homo longi should be a separate branch of the hominin lineage, more closely related to us than to Denisovans or Neanderthals.
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