An ancient jaw discovered in Taiwan belonged to an enigmatic group of first human ancestors called DenisovansThe scientists reported Thursday.
It is known relatively little about Denisovans, an extinct group of human cousins that interacted with Neanders and our own species, Homo Sapiens.
“The fossils of Denisovan are very carved,” with only a few confirmed findings in East Asia, said Co -author of the Takumi Tsutaya study at the Graduate University for advanced studies in Japan.
Until now, Denisovan’s only fossils include partial jaws, some teeth and part of a fingertips found in caves in Siberia and Tibet. Some scientists believe that fossils found in a cave in Laos can also belong to denisovanos.
The probable identification of the Taiwan Jawbone when they denisov expands the region where scientists know the thesis that ancient people lived once, Tsutaya said.
“Therefore, Denisovans must have been able or adapt to a wide range of habitat types,” said study co -author, Frido Welker, to the Reuters news agency.
Cheng-Han Sun / AP 
The partial jawbone was recovered for the first time when a fishing operation dredged the seabed on the Penghu channel near the Taiwan Strait. After it was sold to an antique store, a collector saw it and bought it in 2008, then donated it to the National Museum of Natural Sciences of Taiwan.
Based on the composition of the marine invertebrates that are united, the fossil was dating from the era of the Pleistocene. But exactly what species of early human ancestors belonged were still a mystery.
The fossil condition made it impossible to study ancient DNA. But recently, scientists in Taiwan, Japan and Denmark could extract some protein sequences from the incomplete jaw.
An analysis showed that some protein sequences resembled those contained in the genome of a denisovano fossil recovered in Siberia. The findings were published in the journal Science.
While new research is promising, Rick Potts, director of the Human Origins of Smithsonian Institutions, said he would like to see more data before confirming Taiwan’s fossil as Denisovan.
Potts, who did not participate in the new research, praised the study for “a fantastic job to recover some proteins.” But he added that a small splinter or material may not give a complete image.
At one time, at least three groups of human ancestors – Denisovans, Neandersthals and Homo Sapiens – coexisted in Eurasia and Sometimes intertwinedThe researchers say.
“We can identify Neanderthal elements and Denisovan elements” in the DNA of some living people today, Tsutaya said.
Scientists still do not know exactly why Denisovans became extinct.
“We have so little archaeological and fossil information about Denisovans that we can only speculate why they disappeared,” Welker told Reuters. “A durable legacy, he thought, is that some human populations in the east and Southeast Asia have a bit of ancestry denisov in their genomes today.”