What links a finger bone and some fossil teeth found in a cave in the remote Altai Mountains of Siberia to a single tooth found in a cave in the limestone landscapes of tropical Laos? The answer to this question has been established by an international team of researchers from Laos, Europe, the US, and Australia. Credit: Flinders University
SciTechDaily has a story about the Denisovans. The Denisovans are a closely related species of humans who lived in southeastern Asia around 150,000 years ago. Their DNA had only known from the Denisova cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia (Russia). Now, the discovery of Denisovan DNA in a tooth from Cobra Cave in northern Laos links the modern occurrence of DNA with the ancient fossil DNA. See the detail in a paper in the journal Nature Communications.
Lead Author and Assistant Professor of Palaeoanthropology at the University of Copenhagen, Fabrice Demeter, says the cave sediments contained teeth of giant herbivores, ancient elephants, and rhinos that were known to live in woodland environments.
“After all this work following the many clues written on fossils from very different geographic areas our findings are significant,” Professor Demeter says.
“This fossil represents the first discovery of Denisovans in Southeast Asia and shows that Denisovans were in the south at least as far as Laos. This is in agreement with the genetic evidence found in modern-day Southeast Asian populations.”
