{"id":29865,"date":"2025-06-18T15:00:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T15:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=29865"},"modified":"2025-06-18T15:25:28","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T15:25:28","slug":"dna-discovery-gives-mysterious-ancient-humans-a-face","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=29865","title":{"rendered":"DNA Discovery Gives Mysterious Ancient Humans a Face"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Fifteen years after the discovery of a new type of human, the Denisovan, scientists discovered its DNA in a fossilized skull. The key? Tooth plaque.<\/p>\n

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When Qiaomei Fu discovered a new kind of human 15 years ago, she had no idea what it looked like. There was only a fragment of a pinkie bone to go on.<\/p>\n

The fossil chip, found in a Siberian cave called Denisova, looked as if it might have come from a 66,000-year-old relative of today\u2019s humans, or maybe a Neanderthal. But Dr. Fu, then a graduate student at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, and her colleagues found DNA in the fossil that told a different story<\/a>. The bone had belonged to a girl who was part of a third human lineage never seen before. They named her people the Denisovans<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the years since, Dr. Fu has helped to discover more Denisovan DNA: in teeth and bone fragments from the Denisova cave, in the sediment of a cave floor in Tibet and even in people living today in Asia and the Pacific \u2014 evidence of interbreeding tens of thousands of years ago.<\/p>\n

But without clues from a skeleton or a skull, the physical appearance of these humans remained a mystery, said Dr. Fu, now a geneticist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing. \u201cAfter 15 years, people want to know, who are the Denisovans?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Now she can put a face to the name.<\/p>\n

Dr. Fu and her colleagues announced Wednesday that a skull found in China contains both Denisovan DNA<\/a> and Denisovan protein<\/a>. \u201cThis moment is special to me,\u201d Dr. Fu said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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An illustrated reconstruction of the Denisovan\u2019s face.<\/span>Chuang Zhao<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Fifteen years after the discovery of a new type of human, the Denisovan, scientists discovered its DNA in a fossilized skull. The key? Tooth plaque.When Qiaomei Fu discovered a new kind of human 15 years ago, she had no idea what it looked like. There was only a fragment of a pinkie bone to go on.The fossil chip, found in a Siberian cave called Denisova, looked as if it might have come from a 66,000-year-old relative of today\u2019s humans, or maybe a Neanderthal. But Dr. Fu, then a graduate student at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, and her colleagues found DNA in the fossil that told a different story. The bone had belonged to a girl who was part of a third human lineage never seen before. They named her people the Denisovans.In the years since, Dr. Fu has helped to discover more Denisovan DNA: in teeth and bone fragments from the Denisova cave, in the sediment of a cave floor in Tibet and even in people living today in Asia and the Pacific \u2014 evidence of interbreeding tens of thousands of years ago.But without clues from a skeleton or a skull, the physical appearance of these humans remained a mystery, said Dr. Fu, now a geneticist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing. \u201cAfter 15 years, people want to know, who are the Denisovans?\u201dNow she can put a face to the name.Dr. Fu and her colleagues announced Wednesday that a skull found in China contains both Denisovan DNA and Denisovan protein. \u201cThis moment is special to me,\u201d Dr. Fu said.An illustrated reconstruction of the Denisovan\u2019s face.Chuang ZhaoWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29867,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29865"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29868,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29865\/revisions\/29868"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}