First Denisovan Fossil Discovered in Southwest China

Teams from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and others recently made an important discovery at the Yunnan Bat Cave site. They identified three Denisovan skeletal fossils from a large number of fragmented bones, and together with the two previously unearthed teeth, confirmed that they belonged to Denisovans. The research findings were published online in Nature on the evening of September 9, Beijing time. This study fills the gap in the distribution of Denisovans in southwestern China, and also makes the first discovery of Denisovan skeletal fossils in southwestern China a reality. One of the fragments, a proximal radius, is the first Denisovan radius fossil ever confirmed in the world, providing new clues for studying the body form and behavioral adaptations of this ancient human group. Using methods such as "morphological prescreening + mass spectrometrybased animal species identification," the research team singled out suspected samples from more than 60,000 fragmented bones. They then combined molecular evidence such as proteomic sequencing and phylogenetic analysis to confirm that the remains date back to approximately 167,000 to 134,000 years ago. The researchers believe these findings will help further understand the evolutionary history of Denisovans, their distribution range, and their relationship with other ancient humans.