DENISOVANS - HISTORY
News:
Study brings lifestyle of enigmatic
extinct humans into focus
What's in the news?
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Recently, Thousands of
bone fragments discovered in a cave on the Tibetan
Plateau in China are offering rare insight into the lives of Denisovans, the mysterious extinct cousins
of Neanderthals and our own species, showing they hunted a wide range of
animals from sheep to wooly rhinoceros in this high-altitude abode.
Denisovans:
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Denisovans are ancient cousins of modern humans about
whom much remains to be known.
Timeline:
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They lived lakhs of years ago, coexisting with
Neanderthals in some regions, and interbreeding with early modern humans in
some cases.
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Neanderthals
are adapted to Western Eurasia and to cold regions, whereas Denisovans
originated from Far East Asia with certainly less favorable climate conditions
to preserve the bones.
Discovery:
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They were first
identified as a separate species in 2010,
following the discovery of a fragment of a finger bone and two teeth, dating
back to about 40,000 years ago, in the Denisovan Cave in Siberia.
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In 2019, another fossil, a mandible with a set of teeth — was found on
the Tibetan plateau.
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Traces of Denisovan DNA
have been identified in certain indigenous groups in the Philippines and other
regions.
Significance:
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Denisovan fossils are so
rare because their population was
smaller than that of Neanderthals and there are certainly a number of fossils
attributed to the ‘archaic humans’ (a
group we put fossils into when we don’t really know where to put them).