The Denisovans, a group of ancient humans known until now mostly from DNA and a few scraps of bone, finally have a face, the South China Morning Post reports.
A team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences led by Fu Qiaomei and Xing Song combined ancient-protein analysis with anatomy to show that fossils from Xujiayao, in the Nihewan Basin of Hebei province, belong to the Denisovans. The 20 fossils, excavated between 1976 and 1979, come from at least 16 individuals who lived roughly 199,000 to 138,000 years ago.
They share a low, broad braincase, thick skull bones and simplified premolars. Those features allowed the researchers, publishing in Nature, to produce an artist’s reconstruction of a heavy-set Denisovan face, giving a long-lost branch of the human family a recognisable likeness for the first time.
Source: South China Morning Post