A jawbone found on the ocean floor near Taiwan provides evidence that the Denisovans — a poorly understood ancestor to modern humans — occupied southeast Asia 100,000 years ago. DNA extracted and analyzed from it has evolutionary implications, because, while contemporary southeast Asians have bits of Denisovan DNA in their genomes, the nearest known Denisovan fossil find, until now, hailed from northeastern Asia, according to a report in the journal Science.
“Modern human populations in eastern Asia, particularly in the southeast, have genomic elements derived from the Denisovans, and it has been suggested that the two interbred in the region,” according to a press release. “However, so far, the molecularly identified Denisovan fossils are very fragmentary and have been found only from two sites in northern Asia. This research has directly demonstrated that Denisovans were also distributed in southeastern Asia.”
