First Denisovan Outside Denisova

So a cave in Tibet has revealed the first fossil find of Denisovan people outside of Denisova Cave in Siberia. It’s a mandible with two intact embedded teeth.
Fantastic, and the first of many I suspect. These folks appear to have occupied large parts of East and South Asia, and possibly New Guinea prior to and during our ancestors’ arrival. They were the first homo species to have been known by their genetic presence before any fossil finds, outside of the tiny fragment of finger phalanx from which their genome was obtained, and revealed in 2010.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/science/denisovans-tibet-jawbone-dna.html?smi...

This story was also covered, but much more briefly, in today's Times (London). What both articles say, and what amazes me about the story, is that these people were living in such a hostile unhospitable environment. Even with modern textiles, clothing and tools you would have to be quite hardy.

You sure would. And there are genes H sapiens acquired from them that confer improved cold adaptation. I wonder what the real range of these people was? Northeast Siberia? Is it possible that some of these folks were in a position to cross over to North America much earlier than our direct ancestors were?

There's a bit form Nature here:-
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01395-0?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&am...

I had to make a video about this, because I am so fascinated by this topic. It’s breathtaking to recognize that a group only slightly different from us had a presence in Eurasia for hundreds of thousands of years, and we are only now finding out about who they are and how they lived, and so on.

I also placed a reconstruction of the Denisovan jaw and dentition next to another recent unidentified jaw found in Asia. The results are intriguing....

https://youtu.be/AC5v_wlS7H4

It's family, I have 0,02 % Denisovan DNA according to tests done by the Genographic.
I never heard of them before that test

>6 Macumbeira: yep, in the video, I show a map of Denisovan DNA in modern humans. There’s almost none in Africa, but there’s a small amount throughout European populations. Much more in East Asia, and the greatest amount is in Melanesia and Australian Aboriginal populations, whose DNA is maybe 4-6% Denisovan.

Genographic concluded that my ancestors when leaving Africa, first turned eastwards way into the grasslands of what is Russia today to finally turn back to Europe in a large northern arc.

Great video btw

>8 Macumbeira: Given the vast number of ancestors you have back to when modern humans left Africa that statement is meaningless.

>8 Macumbeira: The test may be suggesting you have some markers in common with the genes of population called Ancient Northern Eurasians, whose lineage connects to the Siberian Mal-ta genome from 24,000 years ago.

One interesting thing about that group, according to current thinking, is that part of the group seem to have turned west toward Europe and contributed genes to modern European populations, and another part mixed with the ancestors of people who wound up in the Americas. This produces some greater genetic affinities between modern Europeans and Native Americans than between geographically closer modern Native Americans and modern Asian populations. If I’m remembering it correctly ;)

>9 jjwilson61: I wouldn't say it is meaningless. The conclusions are very broad it is true, but Genographic proposes a migration path which matches the DNA of participants based on common markers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genographic_Project