quote: CELL PRESS—If you could travel back in time 100,000 years, you’d find yourself living among multiple groups of humans, including anatomically modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans. But exactly what our Denisovan relatives might have looked like had been anyone’s guess for a simple reason: the entire collection of Denisovan remains includes a pinky bone, three teeth, and a lower jaw. Now, researchers reporting in the journal Cell have produced reconstructions of these long-lost relatives based on patterns of methylation in their ancient DNA.
“We provide the first reconstruction of the skeletal anatomy of Denisovans,” says author Liran Carmel of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “In many ways, Denisovans resembled Neanderthals, but in some traits, they resembled us, and in others they were unique.”
And in another recent article, scientists are calling Denisovans or Denisovan/Neanderthal hybrids as "humans".....
quote:Biggest Denisovan fossil yet spills ancient human’s secrets Jawbone from China reveals that the ancient human was widespread across the world — and lived at surprising altitude.
Scientists have uncovered the most complete remains yet from the mysterious ancient-hominin group known as the Denisovans. The jawbone, discovered high on the Tibetan Plateau and dated to more than 160,000 years ago, is also the first Denisovan specimen found outside the Siberian cave in which the hominin was uncovered a decade ago — confirming suspicions that Denisovans were more widespread than the fossil record currently suggests.
The research marks the first time an ancient human has been identified solely through the analysis of proteins. With no usable DNA, scientists examined proteins in the specimen’s teeth, raising hopes that more fossils could be identified even when DNA is not preserved.
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