The old jaw gives an imperceptible face to the Denisovans

summary

Thirty-nine years ago, a Buddhist monk who meditated in a cave on the edge of the Tibetan plateau found something strange: a human jaw with giant molars. Nearly four decades later, a revolutionary new method of identifying human fossils from ancient proteins shows that the jawbone belonged to a Denisovan, a mysterious extinct cousin of Neanderthals. The jaw is the first known fossil of a Denisovan outside the cave of Denisova, in Siberia, and gives paleoanthropologists a first real look at the face of this missing member of the human family. The anatomy of the jaw and the new method of analyzing old proteins could help researchers determine whether other mysterious fossils of Asia are Denisovans.