They find remains of a human species that lived in high-rise areas 160 thousand years ago

The fossil discovered by a Buddhist monk in Baishiya Cave in 1980, in China's Gansu province, proved to be part of the remains of a Denisovan, the mysterious human species that populated Asia thousands of years ago and that it could adapt to an environment with little oxygen at high altitude, such as on the Tibetan plateau.

The study published in Nature tell that Chinese and European scientists have studied half of a lower jaw and two molars and discovered that it belongs to a Denisovan, a faceless human species that was discovered in 2010e only five fossil remains of less than two centimeters were known, all found in the Russian cave of Denisova, south of Siberia, which does not allow to know the physical aspect of these humans.

This new fossil was discovered in a cave on the Tibetan plateau, which he explained Jean-Jacques Hublin, paleoanthropologist of the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology and co-author of the study, "It is considered a sacred place and the human bones that appear here are usually crushed. do traditional medicines with supposed healing powers ".

However, "the monk preferred to save the remains and give them to the sixth living Buddha of Gung-Thang, a religious authority, who then gave them to a Chinese university, "he added.

39 years later and thanks to the collaboration of Chinese and European researchers, it was proved that the bone was not a saintbut of a denisovano teenager unknown bad who lived at least 160,000 years ago. The data from the place where it was found indicate that the Denisovans have adapted to high altitude and low oxygen environments, before the arrival of modern humans.

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Jean-Jacques Hublin, Frido Welker, Zhang Dongju and his colleagues describe in their article a jaw found in the Karst Baishiya cave on the Tibetan plateau, at an altitude of 3,280 meters. The badysis of ancient bone proteins identifies it as belonging to a Denisova man, and radioisotope dating indicates that it is at least 160,000 years old.

The Denisovans – Neanderthalian's closest relatives – constitute a human lineage known only from fossil fragments found in the Denisova Cave in southern Siberia and the survival of certain genetic information in modern humans in Asia. The current Sherpas, Tibetans and neighboring populations have genetic variants derived from Denisovans, which helps them to survive at great heights.

Although the researchers found no trace of DNA conserved in this fossil, they were able to extract the proteins from one of the molars, which they then badyzed using the badysis of old proteins. "Old jaw proteins are clearly distinguishable from modern proteins that can contaminate a sample," he said. Frido Welker from MPI-EVA and the University of Copenhagen and adds: "Our protein badysis shows that Xiahe's jaw belonged to a population of hominids closely related to the Denisovans of Denisova Cave".

DR / FeL