Tibet: pre-history

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Denisovans, 1,60,000 years ago

Carl Zimmer, May 3, 2019: The Times of India

A team of researchers from China recovering Denisovan fossils in a Tibetan cave (left). The 160,000-year old jawbone was the first of its kind found outside Siberia
From: Carl Zimmer, May 3, 2019: The Times of India

Unearthed jawbone shows this human ancestor roamed Asia too

In 1980, a Buddhist monk in Tibet entered a sacred cave to pray. On the floor, he found half of a human jawbone, studded with two teeth.

A team of scientists reported that the fossil belonged to a 160,000-year-old Denisovan, a member of a lineage of mysterious, Neanderthal-like humans that disappeared about 50,000 years ago.

The fossil is the first evidence of this species found outside the Denisova Cave in Siberia, buttressing the theory that these relatives of modern humans once lived across central and eastern Asia.

“I’m very excited — we have a Denisovan that’s somewhere other than Denisova,” said Bence Viola, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Toronto who was not involved in the new study. “We’d known about Denisovans for 10 years and hadn’t found them anywhere else.” The new fossil demonstrates that Denisovans were remarkably hardy, able to endure harsh conditions on the Tibetan plateau, at an elevation of 10,700 feet, with only simple stone tools. The find suggests these Denisovans may have evolved genetic adaptations to high altitudes, and that living Tibetans may have inherited those genes.

Over the past decade, scientists have discovered more Denisovan teeth and bones. Denisovans appeared to have lived in the cave, off and on, from 287,000 years ago to about 50,000 years ago.

Judging from their DNA, Denisovans shared a common ancestor with Neanderthals about 400,000 years ago. They interbred with Neanderthals and with our own species.

Today, people in East Asia, Australia, the Pacific islands and the Americas all carry some Denisovan DNA.

The spread of Denisovan DNA in living humans strongly suggested that they may have lived throughout East and Southeast Asia. But year after year, no one could find a Denisovan fossil outside Siberia.

In 2010, Dongju Zhang, an archaeologist at Lanzhou University in China, began studying the Tibetan jaw, which had been languishing in storage at her institution.

Right away, she could tell it was humanlike — but not human. “We all have chins, but this doesn’t have one,” Dr. Zhang said in an interview.

Eventually, she located the cave in Tibet where the jaw had been discovered. Monks at a nearby temple told her they regularly found human remains there. “They said they were half-bone and halfstone,” said Dr. Zhang.

When she made a small excavation in the cave, they found ancient tools, a sign of human occupation.

She emailed photos of the jaw to Jean-Jacques Hublin, a paleoanthropologist at the Max Planck Institute. Intrigued, he traveled to China to examine the fossil, and soon he and Dr. Zhang had begun a collaboration with others to learn more.

The jaw turned out to be at least 160,000 years old, the oldest evidence of humans on the Tibetan plateau. Its antiquity also supported scientists’ hunch that it did not belong to our own species.

DNA could reveal its true identity. But the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing found that no genetic material had survived. Fortunately, other biological molecules can be found in fossils. At Max Planck, ancient proteins in the jawbone’s teeth were discovered. The proteins matched Denisovan DNA from Siberia. With the new discovery and other recent finds, a picture of the Denisovans has grown clearer. Everything about their heads seems to have been big, from their giant molars to their thick jaws to their massive skulls. Dr. Viola speculated Denisovan adults may have weighed well over 90 kg.

In recent decades, Chinese paleontologists have found a number of puzzling bones that are almost human and are thousands of years old.

Researchers now may compare them to the Tibetan jaw, and search the fossils for ancient proteins. “Denisovans are already somewhere in a museum drawer,” Dr. Welker predicted. “We just haven’t been able to link them together yet.” NYT NEWS SERVICE