Researchers have reported thousands of fossils and artefacts left by Denisovans at Bianfu Cave in China, revealing one of the longest archaeological records of Denisovan occupation and adaptation — stretching across some 120,000 years.
According to The Leakey Foundation's November 2 report, researchers excavated Denisovan bones, mammal fossils and stone tools at the cave. The fossils date to approximately 167,000 to 134,000 years ago, while evidence of repeated human occupation extends from 190,000 to 70,000 years ago.
A pair of studies published in Nature reported the finds, which include seven Denisovan bones, 1,366 stone tools and more than 64,000 mammal fossils. Analyses of dinner scraps, artefacts and bones have granted fresh insights into the residents — members of human evolution's most mysterious branch, the Denisovans.
The discovery adds to the expanding map of Denisovan sites, showing these ancient humans roamed a vast territory across Siberia, the Tibetan Plateau, eastern China and now Bianfu in southwest China. The studies, led by researchers including Rao, Xing and Ruan and colleagues, used ancient proteins to identify the Denisovan remains and examined their subsistence strategies — what they hunted, ate and how they survived across changing climates.
Denisovans remain enigmatic because so few of their fossils have been found, yet their DNA lives on in many modern people, particularly in parts of Asia and Oceania. Each new site sharpens the picture of a adaptable, wide-ranging people who thrived for tens of thousands of years before disappearing.
What happens next: researchers will continue analysing the Bianfu material, with further studies expected to detail how Denisovan diets and tool traditions shifted across the cave's long occupation.