feral botanist wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
Interesting.
Makes me wonder when they will find an actual Denisovian skeleton.
They were discovered when a single finger bone was found in a west siberian cave. The DNA from the tiny bone showed that it came from a woman of a then unknown hominid species (kinda related to the Neanderthals, but distinct from both them, and from us moderns). Subsequently they constantly find Denisovian DNA in living humans in the eastern reaches of Eurasia (including tropical asia), and among native Americans. So the Denisovians, though extinct, left quite a legacy. And their little smidgeon of DNA apparently was vital to the survival of the modern Inuit.
I was surprised when the claimed a new species base on one finger, but I guess they have found a little more than that now.
Basically not
They found two teeth, and a toe bone, from other Denisovian individuals in different layers of the same cave. That's it.
From the tooth we know distinctive stuff about their teeth (their teeth were a bit archaic in ways that were similar to Homo Erectus and different from us and Neandethals). But there is as of yet no dramatic skeleton of a Denisovian person found yet to show us how they looked either in the face, or physique, the way have for other hominids like the Neanderthals.
31 Dec 2016, 1:26 pm
