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- The Xiahe mandible was found in a Chinese cave in 1980.
- It is the first fossil of Denisovan identified outside Siberia.
- This can help explain how modern Tibetans have adapted to harsh, high altitude climates.
A fossilized jaw picked up 40 years ago in a cave on the Tibetan Plateau is the first evidence of a former human parent named the Denisovans discovered outside of Siberia, Russia.
And, this can help explain how modern Tibetans have adapted to high altitude, according to a study published in Nature.
A Buddhist monk found the two-toothed jaw in 1980 at Baishiya Karst Cave in Gansu Province, China. He forwarded it to a Buddhist leader who then forwarded it to Lanzhou University, where he sat until 2010, reports the Associated Press.
It was then that Dongju Zhang, an archaeologist in Lanzhou, began to study the jawbone, known as the Xiahe mandible of the county where it was found.
Jaw DNA, at least 160,000 years old, was too degraded to be useful. Instead, the researchers found old proteins in both teeth, reports the New York Times. This protein corresponded to the fossil DNA of Denisovan, found at a distance of 1,400 km in Siberia.
Until now, Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains, in Siberia, was the only place where remains of Denisovan were found. The species lived about the same time as the Neanderthals. Like the Neanderthals, the Denisovans crossed with the first humans.
The undated photo made available by Dr. Dongju Zhang of Lanzhou University in April 2019 shows the Baishiya Karst Cave above the bed of the Jiangla River in Gansu Province, China. It is both a reputed Buddhist cave in the region and a tourist site. According to a report published Wednesday, May 1, 2019, a jaw fragment found in the cave would be at least 160,000 years old, and recovered proteins allowed scientists to conclude that it came from a Denisovan, a parent Neanderthal.
(Dongju Zhang / Lanzhou University via AP)
The Xiahe mandible explains how one can find Denisovan's DNA in people today in Asia and Australasia, writes the National Geographic. The Denisovans traveled far beyond this single cave in Siberia.
The jaw also responds to the mystery of how the DNA of Siberia Denisovan indicated that the species had adapted to life at high altitude, even though the cave in Russia is close to the level of the sea, reports AP.
The Chinese cave is at an altitude of 10,800 feet.
"We now have an explanation," said Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, one of the newspaper's authors.
This undated photo made available by Dr. Dongju Zhang of Lanzhou University in April 2019 shows the right half of Xiahe's mandible, discovered in 1980 in the Baishiya Karst Cave of Gansu Province, China. According to a report released on Wednesday, May 1, 2019, it would be at least 160,000 years old and recovered proteins led scientists to conclude that the jaw came from a Denisovan, a Neanderthal parent.
(Qiu Menghan University / Dongju Zhang / Lanzhou via AP)
"It's a big surprise" that a family member can live in the cold airs at the top of the Tibetan plateau more than 100,000 years before the arrival of our own species, did it? he told the press, according to AP.
In 2014, researchers discovered that the gene that allowed Denisovans' genes to adapt Difficult conditions at high altitudes can only be found today by modern Tibetans and very few Han Chinese.
Emilia Huerta-Sanchez, population geneticist at Brown University, who led the 2014 study, told The New York Times that without the DNA of Tibetan Denisovans, it's impossible to know in which species the gene's developed for the first time.
"We do not know the sequence of events," she said. "But the Denisovans are such a mysterious group that everything we learn is exciting."
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