Human Fossil Found 20+ Years Ago Has Been Deemed to Belong to the Denisovan Group
- Karen Song
- Apr 14
- 2 min read
A fossilized jawbone that was discovered off the coast of Taiwan more than 20 years ago has been recently identified as belonging to a group of extinct humans called the Denisovans. This fossil, a lower jawbone with four teeth intact, is called Penghu 1. It was first found by fishing crews from the Penghu channel and donated to Taiwan’s National Museum of Natural Science. However, the identity of the fossil remains a mystery.
Recently, researchers and scientists published an article in Science titled “A male Denisovan mandible from Pleistocene Taiwan”, presenting and describing their long research journey evaluating this fossil. This study documents the time-consuming and unique methods scientists used to extract ancient proteins from the fossil. New, valuable insights are also provided, extending the previously believed geographical range of the Denisovan group from colder, high-altitude regions to warm climate areas.
Researchers spent more than 2 years refining techniques to extract ancient proteins from the bone and then used acid to isolate protein fragments from the surface of a Penghu 1 molar tooth. Through this process, the team found several fragments with amino-acid sequence variations that matched those seen in genetic sequences of a Denisovan finger bone found in a Denisovan Cave in Southern Siberia in 2008.
However, although this current study is based on a single individual and this technique returns relative measurements, researchers warn that it’s an imperfect representation of the disposition of the Denisovan species.
“If you were to find a single Homo sapiens fossil and it's an NBA basketball player then you might conclude Homo sapiens were 7 feet tall,” says Gaberial Renaud, a bioinformatician at the University of Copenhagen, “It’s an interesting approach, but we can’t verify the predictions until several Denisovian skeletons are found.”
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