LEIPZIG, GERMANY—Nature News reports that a fossil discovered in 1980 in Baishiya Karst Cave, which is located on the Tibetan Plateau, has been identified as a partial Denisovan jawbone. The mandible is described as having a robust, primitive shape that shares anatomical features with Neanderthals and the Denisovan molars recovered from Russia’s Denisova Cave. Researchers were not able to recover DNA from the jawbone fossil, which is estimated to be at least 160,000 years old, but molecular anthropologist Frido Welker of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the University of Copenhagen said researchers were able to extract collagen proteins from dentine preserved in the jaw’s two very large molars. Analysis of these highly degraded proteins suggests the individual was closely related to Denisovans who lived in the Altai Mountains. And, because one of the teeth was still erupting from the jaw, scientists think the individual was an adolescent at the time of death. Some modern Tibetans carry a gene variant that allows them to live at high altitudes. Welker explained that Denisovans living on the Tibetan Plateau may have developed this adaptation and passed it on to modern humans some 30,000 to 40,000 years ago. To read more about recent research into Denisovan genetics, go to "Hominin Hybrid."
