Denisovans Were Much Taller Than Previously Thought

PENGHU CHANNEL, TAIWAN—Surprising new research suggests that Denisovans, an extinct species of hominin, were much taller than their Pleistocene contemporaries, Science reports. Denisovans were related to Neanderthals but genetically split from them around 550,000 years ago. They came to inhabit much of Asia, from Siberia to China. Two decades ago, two mysterious and ancient leg bones were dredged up from the seafloor of the Penghu Channel off the coast of Taiwan. Recent proteomic analysis of proteins in the tibia and femur conducted by a Japanese and Taiwanese team has confirmed that they belonged to two Denisovan male individuals who lived around 45,000 years ago. The team also concluded that the hominins were exceptionally tall for their time period as well, standing six feet two inches and five feet eleven inches, respectively. In comparison, Neanderthals were typically around six to eight inches shorter, while members of Homo erectus were on average even shorter than that. Read the original scholarly article about this research in bioRxiv. For more, go to "Denisovans at Altitude," one of ARCHAEOLOGY's Top 10 Discoveries of 2019.