Mysterious Denisovans emerged from the shadows in 2019
Denisovans’ days of Stone Age obscurity appear numbered. The mysterious “ghost clan” floated into view over a decade ago, when a bit of a girl’s pinkie bone, found in Siberia’s Denisova Cave, yielded DNA that didn’t match that of any known hominid. A few more fossils — three teeth and a limb fragment — plus genetic analyses indicated Denisovans were close relatives and occasional mating partners of Neandertals and Homo sapiens tens of thousands of years ago. But there was too little evidence to say what Denisovans looked like or how they behaved. 52019 Top 10See full list Discoveries reported in 2019 brought Denisovans into focus — but left plenty of room for interpretation. As fossils accumulate, investigators will grasp how Denisovan anatomy influenced the skeletal makeup of its mating partners in the Homo genus. Thanks to Denisovan discoveries, “we can now see that hybridization contributed to our own origins,” says paleoanthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Ancient DNA evidence reported this year suggests...