Historic tooth implies Denisovans ventured significantly over and above Siberia. A fossilized tooth unearthed in a cave in northern Laos may have belonged to a youthful Denisovan girl that died between 164,000 and 131,000 years back. If verified, it would be the initially fossil proof that Denisovans lived in SE Asia.

Someone go get Graham Handcock.

Wonder how terrifying day to day life was back then?

This person is interesting. Father is denisovan and mother is neanderthal.

We already had genetic evidence in that modern (aboriginal) people from Oceania had some Denisovan DNA, but I guess that was a question of where that admixture happened – did their ancestors bang Denisovans in Siberia and then migrate or were Denisovans more widespread?

I guess we still can’t rule out that they banged the Denisovans in Siberia then migrated, but Denisovans in SE Asia makes more sense given that East Asians have almost no Denisovan admixture and the odds they so thoroughly lost it through genetic drift or being swamped by other migrations doesn’t seem likely.

We pretty well knew this based on genetics of humans, due to time and likely place of admixture events, but it’s good to have physical confirmation.

There is so much we don’t know and so much more that we have misinterpreted throughout the years.

Do we have any idea what the denisovans looked like?

There are a lot of assumptions in this article but there is no indication that we will get the DNA proof that we would need to confirm.

> Without more fossils or DNA analysis, “the reality is that we cannot know whether this single and badly preserved molar belonged to a Denisovan”, she says.

>But Viola says that the molar is in the “right place and right time” to belong to a Denisovan. If this were confirmed, it would reveal that the species was able to adapt to different environmental conditions.

So they found a cave full of teeth from all sorts of animals and then a weird hominid looking one that is too complex for h. Erectus and kinda big (which denisovian teeth are usually large) and jumped to a lot of different conclusions based on that.

I love the area of science. Its super intriguing but this seems like they’re looking to confirm a (hopeful) bias.
Maybe someone in th field can expand on the methodology that these folks used which would make this a more definitive find. The article didn’t really get to that level of detail.

It is absolutely stunning to me how many different kinds of human species have existed. It has been 30,000 years since the last Neanderthal died, but as a species Homo Sapiens Sapiens has a long history of living with similarly skilled and talented humanoids We think of Lord of the Rings type worlds with dwarves, elves, orcs and trolls as being fantastic, but our own planet had a diversity of intelligent, emotional and clever neighbors in the distant past.