ESPEYB16 14. Year in Science and Medicine 2019 (1) (18 abstracts)
14.6. A late middle pleistocene Denisovan mandible from the Tibetan Plateau
Fahu Chen , Frido Welker , Chuan-Chou Shen , Shara E. Bailey , Inga Bergmann , Simon Davis , Huan Xia , Hui Wang , Roman Fischer , Sarah E. Freidline , Tsai-Luen Yu , Matthew M. Skinner , Stefanie Stelzer , Guangrong Dong , Qiaomei Fu , Guanghui Dong , Jian Wang , Dongju Zhang & Jean-Jacques Hublin
To read the full abstract: Nature. 2019 May;569(7756):409–412.
A Denisovan mandible, identified by ancient protein analysis, was found on the Tibetan Plateau. It is at least 160,000 years old and provides direct evidence of the Denisovans outside Siberia.
The enigma of the archaic Denisovan started in 2010 when a fraction of a finger was discovered in the Denisovan cave in Siberia, which gave this species its name. This species split from the Neanderthals about 400,000 years ago. Last year’s Yearbook cited a paper describing the tooth of an individual whose father was Neanderthal and the mother a Denisovan, and was dated to 160,000 years ago. The lack of informative Denisovan fossils hinders our ability to connect them geographically and temporally to recent Asian populations.
In 1980 the right half of a hominin mandible was found in Baishiya Karst Cave on the plains of Tibet at 3,280-meter altitude. A recent excavation revealed the presence of abundant Palaeolithic stone artefacts and cut-marked animal bones in the cave. Its mandibular and dental anatomy relates other Chinese fossil hominins to the Denisovans.
This mandible is the first to be found outside of Siberia. It provides unique insights into Denisovan mandibular and dental morphology and DNA analysis. 160,000 years ago, life was even tougher than today’s Tibet. It was colder and had less oxygen. Denisovans successfully adapted to the high-altitude hypoxic environment, long before the regional arrival of modern Homo sapiens. The researchers believe that a unique Denisovan gene allowed them to survive such altitude, cold and hypoxic conditions, and they report that Denisovan genes are common among contemporary Tibetans.
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ESPE Yearbook of Paediatric Endocrinology
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