Denisovans

Denisovans are known from a Siberian genome, a Tibetan jaw and a Harbin skull identified by proteins and DNA. They carried the fused human chromosome 2, had large brains and interbred with Neanderthals and modern humans, so reading them as people is well supported. Their dates, 146,000 years and older by uranium decay and genetic clocks, have no young-earth reply.

By AI (Claude Opus 5.5, thinking level unavailable; split from an earlier draft) Draft:  October 2026

"A difference in karyotype would likely have reduced the fertility of any offspring of Denisovans and modern humans.  We searched all DNA fragments sequenced from the Denisovan individual and identified 12 fragments containing joined repeats." — Matthias Meyer and colleagues, on the fused chromosome 2, 20121

Summary

Denisovans are known from a finger bone, a few teeth and bone scraps from one Siberian cave, from their DNA, and from two fossils found far from it:  a jaw from the Tibetan Plateau and a skull from Harbin in northeast China.  This article asks the two questions its sibling Neanderthals asks.  Were they people?  And when did they live?

They were people.

  1. Denisovans carried the fused human chromosome 2. Meyer's team found 12 sequence reads spanning the fusion junction and none in chimpanzees or bonobos, and said in print that a karyotype difference would likely have reduced hybrid fertility.1 See the Chromosome 2 Fusion article.
  2. The protein-coding gap is small when counted. Meyer's team found 260 fixed amino-acid changes in well-defined genes that set living humans apart from the Denisovan.1 The count against the Altai Neanderthal is 96.2
  3. One sequenced individual had a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father. Denisova 11 was a girl of at least thirteen.3 She was a first-generation hybrid, not a member of a long-mixed population.3
  4. They interbred with modern humans. Reich found 4 to 6 percent Denisovan ancestry in Melanesians.4 Archaic Admixture sets out that evidence and its limits.
  5. They now have a jaw and a face. The Xiahe jaw, found at 3,280 metres in Baishiya Karst Cave, was tied to the Denisovans by its proteins in 2019.56 The Harbin skull, named Homo longi in 2021, was shown to be Denisovan in 2025 by its proteins and by mitochondrial DNA from its dental tartar.78 It held about 1,420 ml of brain, within the modern human range, behind a broad low face with a heavy brow and very large molars.910 Answers in Genesis places both as post-Babel people.1112 See Part 3.

The dates are not answered.

  1. Every clock on the genome puts them hundreds of thousands of years back. Their mitochondrial DNA split from the human and Neanderthal line about a million years ago,4 Meyer's population divergence is 170,000 to 700,000 years,1 and their Y chromosomes split from the modern human line about 700,000 years ago.13 The low end is 38 times the period since a Flood 4,500 years ago. Peter Line, the one creationist who surveys the Denisovan finds, sets the dates aside and offers no mechanism to shorten them.14
  2. Uranium decay, which needs no mutation rate, agrees. The calcite crust on the Xiahe jaw is about 160,000 years old,5 and the Harbin skull is at least 146,000 years old, though its bone ages scatter widely.1515 Lacey puts the Harbin skull at 2200 to 1800 BC;12 its minimum age is 35 to 38 times that.16 Young-earth physicists put accelerated decay in the Flood year,17 before these crusts and bones existed on their own model.

Verdict.  The genome says the Denisovans were people, and the Harbin skull's modern-sized brain agrees.  Line's and Lacey's reading of them as one more interbreeding human population fits it.14  Their dates, genetic and radiometric, have no young-earth answer.  Part 4 of Neanderthals works the clocks for both populations.

Part 1: A genome before a fossil

The Denisovans are a genome before they are a fossil.  Reich's 2010 paper read the finger bone to 1.9-fold coverage.4  Its mitochondrial DNA had already surprised everyone.  It "diverged from the common lineage leading to modern human and Neanderthal mtDNAs about one million years ago", twice as far back as the Neanderthal split.4  The nuclear genome then put them somewhere else.  Reich's team fit the data with "a model that assumes the Denisovans are a sister group of Neanderthals".4  One molecule gave one tree and the whole genome gave another.  Mainstream authors explain the conflict by an old mitochondrial lineage that later got replaced;  Posth's 2017 Hohlenstein-Stadel mitogenome is the current version of that argument.18  The point to keep is that the field itself treats a single-molecule tree as fallible, and says so.

Meyer's 2012 genome is the one that matters.  A new single-stranded library method lifted the same finger bone to 31-fold coverage.  Two of its findings are the strongest sentences in the mainstream literature for a one-kind reading.  The first is the chromosome 2 result quoted at the head of this page:  Denisovans carried the fused human chromosome, and the authors said a karyotype difference would likely have cut hybrid fertility.1  The second is the size of the catalogue of what makes a modern human different.  Meyer's team listed "111,812 single-nucleotide changes (SNCs) and 9499 insertions and deletions where modern humans are fixed for the derived state", called it "a relatively small number", and found 260 that change an amino acid in a well-defined gene.1  The equivalent count against the Altai Neanderthal is 96 amino-acid changes in 87 proteins.2  Against Green's 2010 draft it was 78.19  Green's own comment on that number:  "relatively few amino acid changes have become fixed in the last few hundred thousand years of human evolution."19

A small population.  Denisovan heterozygosity is about 0.022 percent, roughly a fifth of an African's, and Meyer found no runs of homozygosity to blame it on.1  Neanderthals sets that beside the Neanderthal figures.  A small, isolated, long-lived population fits both.  A founder group of a few dozen people dispersing from Babel a few centuries after the Flood would need to be shown to produce the same numbers, and nobody has run that model.

Part 2: Denisova 11, a first-generation hybrid

Denisova 11.  In 2018 Viviane Slon's team identified a long-bone fragment from Denisova Cave by its collagen and read its genome.  Its cortical thickness implies the individual "was at least 13 years old at death".3  At sites where Neanderthals and Denisovans differ, pairs of DNA fragments matched one genome each about 43.5 percent of the time.  A long-mixed population at equilibrium would give about 25 percent.  The result rejects a backcross, a second-generation cross and a stably mixed population.  "We conclude that Denisova 11 did not originate from a population carrying equal proportions of Neandertal and Denisovan ancestry.  Rather, she was the offspring of a Neandertal mother, who contributed her mtDNA, and a Denisovan father."3  Of the handful of archaic individuals ever sequenced, one is a first-generation hybrid.  That is a probability statement about how often such matings happened.  Two limits go with it.  Nothing is known about whether she herself could have had children;  a thirteen-year-old's bone cannot say.  And her discoverers raise "possibly reduced fitness of individuals of mixed ancestry" as one reason so few such people turn up.3

Part 3: A jaw from Tibet and a skull from Harbin

Two fossils found far from Siberia now give the Denisovans a jaw and a face.  Neither yielded a nuclear genome.  Each was tied to the Denisovans by a method that reads molecules other than nuclear DNA:  proteins, which survive longer than DNA, and mitochondrial DNA from dental tartar or cave dirt.  Each was dated by uranium decay, a clock that owes nothing to mutation rates.

Xiahe: the jaw

The find.  A monk found the right half of a lower jaw in 1980 in Baishiya Karst Cave, Xiahe county, Gansu, on the Tibetan Plateau.14  The cave sits 3,280 metres above sea level.6  Denisova Cave in the Altai is at 700 metres.5

How it was identified.  No DNA survived in the jaw.  In 2019 Fahu Chen, Frido Welker, Jean-Jacques Hublin and colleagues extracted proteins instead.  A dentine sample still held ancient proteins;  a bone sample did not.  A tree built from those proteins placed the jaw with the high-coverage genome from Denisova Cave, at a Bayesian probability of 0.99.5  The authors kept the claim modest.  With only one Denisovan genome to compare against, they assigned the jaw "to a hominin population closely related to the Denisovans from Denisova Cave."5  The next paper from the same cave summed up the protein case as "an amino acid substitution in its collagen."20  That is a thin thread, and it should be said plainly.

Support from the cave floor.  In 2020 Dongju Zhang, Qiaomei Fu, Svante Pääbo and colleagues extracted DNA from the cave's sediment and found Denisovan mitochondrial DNA in layers "deposited ~100 thousand and ~60 thousand years ago (ka) and possibly as recently as ~45 ka."20  In 2024 Huan Xia's team identified a rib among the cave's animal bones by its collagen, assigned it to the Denisovan lineage by its proteins, and dated its layer to 48,000 to 32,000 years ago.6  So three lines of evidence, a jaw, a rib and sediment DNA, put Denisovans in the same high cave.

What the jaw looks like.  The jaw is "very robust, relatively low and thick," and "there is no developed chin."5  Its teeth are very large, and the authors called them the feature that "best links it to the fragmentary fossils from the Denisova Cave."5  The third molar never formed.  The second molar has an extra root, a trait the authors note is rare in living people outside Asia and more common in recent Asians, and the Penghu 1 jaw shares it.5

How it was dated.  A crust of calcite had grown onto the underside of the jaw.  Calcite takes in uranium from groundwater but almost no thorium, so the thorium-230 made by uranium decay builds up from zero once the crust forms, and the ratio of the two gives the time since then.  Chen's team dated three samples of the crust.  The whole crust gave 164,500 ± 6,200 years, the top 155,000 ± 15,000 and the bottom 163,000 ± 10,000.  Because top and bottom agree, the crust grew quickly, about 160,000 years ago.5  The jaw was there before its crust, so 160,000 years is a minimum.5  A thin calcite crust sealed onto a fossil is the best case for this method.

Harbin: the face

The find.  The Harbin skull was reportedly found in 1933 while a bridge was being built over the Songhua River in Harbin, northeast China.  Its exact find spot and layer were lost in the years that followed.15  In 2021 Qiang Ji, Xijun Ni, Chris Stringer and colleagues described it in three papers and named it a new species, Homo longi.  It holds about 1,420 ml of brain, "falling in the range of H. sapiens and Neanderthals."9  It is probably a man, and his skull sutures suggest about fifty, though his tooth wear suggests younger.10

What the face looks like.  Ni's team listed what sets it apart:  "long and low cranial vault, a wide and low face, large and almost square orbits, gently curved but massively developed supraorbital torus, flat and low cheekbones with a shallow canine fossa, and a shallow palate with thick alveolar bone supporting very large molars."10  They noticed the Denisovan link four years before any molecule was read from the skull.  The one surviving molar is matched most closely, in size and shape, by the molars from Denisova Cave.10  Their tree of 55 skulls put Harbin and the Xiahe jaw side by side as a sister group.10

How it was dated.  Qingfeng Shao's team first matched the dirt inside the skull to a lake bed of the Upper Huangshan Formation, by its chemistry and strontium isotopes.  That formation spans 138,000 to 309,000 years.9  They then drilled ten samples from the skull itself for uranium-series dating.  Bone is a poor container for this method, because uranium can enter it late or wash out again.  The ten apparent ages scattered from 62,000 ± 3,000 to 296,000 ± 8,000 years, and the two youngest came from a tooth root that probably took up uranium late.15  The team set aside the five oldest as leached and took the highest of the rest, about 146,000 years, as a minimum.1515  This is the weakest date in the article, and the authors' own scatter shows why.

How it was identified.  In 2025 two papers from Qiaomei Fu's laboratory in Beijing settled what the skull was.  The first recovered 95 ancient proteins from it.  It found Denisovan-derived amino acids and a cluster with the Denisova Cave genome, "suggesting that the Harbin individual belongs to a Denisovan population."7  Its own body text is more careful about the count:  "one highly confident and two potential" Denisovan variants.7  The second paper found no DNA in a tooth or in the dense bone of the inner ear, but recovered mitochondrial DNA from the tartar on the teeth.  That DNA "falls within Denisovan mtDNA variation," on a branch carried by early Denisovans at Denisova Cave.8  The authors list their own limit:  a small amount of mitochondrial DNA and no nuclear DNA.8  Two independent molecules, protein and mitochondrial DNA, now point the same way.  The team that named Homo longi now treats the two as one group.  In 2025 Ni and Stringer's team described the longi group as a clade "which includes the Denisovans."21

What the two fossils add

  1. A face and a jaw. Denisovans had a broad, low face, a heavy brow, no chin and very large molars. The Harbin braincase held about 1,420 ml, inside the modern human range.9 A large brain in a heavy-browed skull is the pattern of the Neanderthals, whom young-earth writers accept as human.
  2. A wide range. Denisovans lived in a low cave in the Altai, at 3,280 metres on the Tibetan Plateau, and in the lowlands of northeast China. Reich's 2010 guess that they "may have been widespread in Asia" has held.4 Tibetans today carry a Denisovan variant of the EPAS1 gene that helps them at altitude, and Chen's team suggested it may come from Denisovans who lived on the plateau itself.5 EPAS1 and the Tibetan Highlands covers that gene.
  3. More Denisovans may already be in the drawers. Fu's team called it "plausible" that the Chinese skulls from Dali, Jinniushan and Hualongdong are Denisovan too.8 The Middle Pleistocene Muddle covers those skulls and the naming dispute.
  4. Dates that do not come from DNA. Both minimum ages rest on uranium decay, not on mutation rates. They agree in scale with the genetic clocks in Part 4.

Where young-earth writers place them

Answers in Genesis answered both finds within two months, and both answers treat the Denisovans as people descended from Noah.  Troy Lacey wrote of the Xiahe jaw in 2019 that "it is quite possible that the Denisovans were descendants of Gomer's son Togarmah," whose clan passed through Tibet on the way to Siberia.11  No text links Togarmah to central Asia.  In 2021 Lacey wrote of the Harbin skull:  "This skull, in reality, belongs to a post-Babel human, roughly between 2200–1800 BC."12  He added that it might be Denisovan, and "In any case, he was just as human as you and me."12  The 2025 molecules bore out his guess.  Peter Line's 2019 survey also records the Xiahe jaw and reads Denisovans as human.1414

The dates do not fit that placement.  Lacey's window for the Harbin skull, 2200 to 1800 BC, is 3,825 to 4,225 years ago.  The skull's 146,000-year minimum is 35 to 38 times that.  Even the youngest of the ten scattered bone ages, 62,000 years, which its authors blame on late uranium uptake, is 15 to 16 times Lacey's window.  The Xiahe crust's 160,000 years is about 36 times the 4,500 years since the Flood used elsewhere on this page.16

Accelerated decay does not reach these clocks.  Lacey's reply to the Harbin date is general:  "there are many assumptions built into radiometric dating."12  He names no faulty input for uranium-series dating.  Young-earth physicists who propose faster radioactive decay put it in the Flood year.  Jake Hebert, Andrew Snelling and Timothy Clarey wrote in 2016 that "such accelerated decay would have decelerated at the end of the Flood."17  Snelling stretched it in 2018 to "during and soon after the flood."22  But the calcite on the Xiahe jaw grew on a jaw that was already there, and Lacey puts Denisovans after Babel.  A speed-up that ended at or soon after the Flood cannot have run fast inside a crust that formed later.  For these two clocks to fit, uranium would have had to decay 35 or more times faster after Babel, and no young-earth writer proposes that.

Part 4: When they lived

Most dates on the Denisovans come from their DNA or from the cave they were found in.  The two fossils in Part 3 add uranium-series minimums, at least 160,000 years for the Xiahe jaw and at least 146,000 years for the Harbin skull, which do not depend on any mutation rate.  The full case on the dates, with the methods that do not depend on DNA, is in Part 4 of Neanderthals.  The Denisovan numbers alone run as follows.

Mitochondrial DNA:  about a million years.  Reich's 2010 paper puts the split of the Denisovan mitochondrial lineage from the human and Neanderthal line at about one million years.4  The nuclear genome contradicts that tree, as Part 1 sets out, so this is the least secure of the numbers.

The nuclear genome:  170,000 years at the least.  Meyer's Denisovan population divergence of "170,000 to 700,000 years" was widened on purpose to span every plausible human mutation rate,1 and the low end is still 38 times the post-Flood period.  Prüfer's 2014 Table 1 puts the Neanderthal-Denisova split at 190,000 to 236,000 years on the faster calibration and 381,000 to 473,000 on the trio-measured mutation rate.2

The Y chromosome:  about 700,000 years.  Petr's team found that the two Denisovan Y chromosomes split from the modern human line about 700,000 years ago, twice as far back as the Neanderthal ones.13

None of these is within an order of magnitude of a 4,500-year chronology, and no creationist has published a model that compresses them.

Part 5: The creationist reading

Line:  the survey.  Troy Lacey's placement of the Xiahe and Harbin fossils after Babel is set out in Part 3.  Peter Line's 2019 overview walks through every Denisovan find to that date and concludes that "by the biological species concept that makes them all part of the same species."14  His model:  "if the evolutionary assumptions and long ages are dropped, then a simple explanation is that the Denisovan, Neanderthal and SH Homo heidelbergensis remains all belonged to populations that were fully human, and to various degrees interbred with each other".14  He goes further and suggests that Denisovans were "erectus-like", while hedging that "one cannot yet say with certainty".14  The hedge should stay:  the Denisovan nuclear genome is a sister lineage to Neanderthals, which is not where Homo erectus would sit.  Line quotes the Denisova Cave chronology in full, including that Denisovans were at the site "as early as 195,000 years ago",14 and then sets the dates aside:  "Long-age 'dates' herein, such as the above, are given to properly explain the research findings being reported on, but reflect the beliefs/assumptions within evolutionism, not those of the author (recent creation c. 6ka)."14  That is honest, and better than paraphrasing sources into vagueness.  But it puts the whole burden on the dating and offers no mechanism by which 195,000 modelled years become a few hundred.

Objections and responses

"A finger bone and a few teeth are too little to define a people."  The Denisovans are defined by a genome read to 31-fold coverage from that finger bone.  The model that fits it makes them a sister group of Neanderthals,4 and it carries the fused human chromosome 2.1  The scant bones limit what can be said about their bodies, not about their kinship.

"Denisovans were Homo erectus."  Line suggests they were erectus-like and hedges it.14  The hedge should stay.  The nuclear genome places them as a sister lineage to Neanderthals,4 which is not where Homo erectus would sit.

"The uranium-series dates assume nothing was added or lost, and bone leaks."  True for bone, and the Harbin team says so:  its ten bone ages scatter from 62,000 to 296,000 years, and the team set half of them aside.1515  The Xiahe date is the better one.  It comes from a calcite crust, and its top, bottom and bulk samples agree.5  Neither problem helps a young-earth reading:  the youngest of all the scattered bone ages is still 15 to 16 times Lacey's window.16

"A few amino acids cannot identify a population."  It is a fair worry, and the authors share it.  Chen's team assigned the Xiahe jaw only to a population "closely related to the Denisovans,"5 and Fu's team counted one highly confident Denisovan variant in the Harbin proteins.7  For Harbin a second, independent molecule agrees:  its mitochondrial DNA falls within Denisovan variation.8  For Xiahe the cave's sediment holds Denisovan mitochondrial DNA.20  Either way, the people in question are human on the young-earth reading, so nothing in that reading depends on the label.

"Ancient DNA is contaminated and cannot be trusted."  Contamination is now counted at diagnostic positions, and for the Denisovan genome it is 0.35 percent.  Neanderthals answers Thomas and Tomkins on this in full, and Line accepts the Denisovan genomes as real.

Issues and unanswered questions

  1. The fossil identifications rest on a few molecules. The Xiahe jaw was tied to the Denisovans by a handful of protein positions,20 and the Harbin skull by one highly confident and two possible protein variants plus a small amount of mitochondrial DNA.78 Neither has a nuclear genome. The two lines agree for Harbin, and sediment DNA backs up the Tibetan cave, but a nuclear genome from either fossil would settle it.
  2. A post-Babel dispersal model that produces the deep structure inside the Denisovans has not been attempted. Neanderthals lists what such a model must show.

Where the creationist side is weakest.  On the dates.  Line's survey sets them aside, and no creationist has published a mechanism that compresses a mitochondrial, a nuclear and a Y-chromosome clock together.  The uranium-series ages on the Xiahe crust and the Harbin bone add two clocks that do not depend on mutation rates at all.

Where the mainstream side is weakest.  The Denisovan mtDNA gave the wrong tree and had to be explained after the fact.  The Harbin skull's find spot is lost, and its own bone dates scatter from 62,000 to 296,000 years.

Verdict

Denisovans were people, and the evidence is genetic.  They carried the fused human chromosome 2, a few hundred fixed amino-acid changes set them apart from living humans, and they had children with Neanderthals and with modern humans.  The Harbin skull adds a brain of about 1,420 ml, inside the modern range.  Line's and Lacey's reading of them as one more post-Babel human population fits that evidence.

Their dates have not been answered.  The mitochondrial, nuclear and Y-chromosome clocks put them between 170,000 and a million years back.  Uranium decay puts the Xiahe jaw at 160,000 years or more and the Harbin skull at 146,000 or more, 35 to 38 times Lacey's post-Babel window for Harbin.  Line sets those dates aside, and Lacey names no faulty input.  What a young-earth model would have to show is listed in Neanderthals, and it applies here unchanged.

Companion pages

Sources

  1. 1.

    Meyer, Matthias et al.  “A high-coverage genome sequence from an archaic Denisovan individual.”  Science 338(6104):222–226.  Oct 12, 2012.  A genome paper that sequenced the finger bone of a Denisovan to about 31-fold coverage, using a new way of preparing the DNA that recovered at least 6-fold and 22-fold more DNA molecules than the two earlier preparations from the same bone.  It estimated how much Denisovan DNA is in present-day people and listed the genetic changes that set modern humans apart.  The article cites it for the fused chromosome 2 and for the count of 260 human-specific protein changes.

    1. 1a.

      Page 225, section Denisovan genomic features:  “The great apes have 24 pairs of chromosomes whereas humans have 23.  This difference is caused by a fusion of two acrocentric chromosomes that formed the metacentric human chromosome 2 (25) and resulted in the unique head-to-head joining of the telomeric hexameric repeat GGGGTT.  A difference in karyotype would likely have reduced the fertility of any offspring of Denisovans and modern humans.  We searched all DNA fragments sequenced from the Denisovan individual and identified 12 fragments containing joined repeats.  By contrast, reads from several chimpanzees and bonobos failed to yield any such fragments (8).  We conclude that Denisovans and modern humans (and presumably Neandertals) shared the fused chromosome 2.” ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

    2. 1b.

      Page 225:  “In total, we identified 111,812 single-nucleotide changes (SNCs) and 9499 insertions and deletions where modern humans are fixed for the derived state, whereas the Denisovan individual carried the ancestral, i.e., ape-like, variant (8).  This is a relatively small number.  We identified 260 human-specific SNCs that cause fixed amino acid substitutions in well-defined human genes”. ↩ ↩

    3. 1c.

      Page 223:  “From this, we estimate the population divergence between Denisovans and present-day humans to be 170,000 to 700,000 years (8).  This is wider than our previous estimate (1), largely because it takes into account recent studies that broaden the range of plausible estimates for human mutation rates and thus the human-chimpanzee divergence”. ↩ ↩

    4. 1d.

      Page 224:  “Several methods indicate that the Denisovan heterozygosity is about 0.022% (8).  This is ~20% of the heterozygosity seen in the Africans, ~26 to 33% of that in the Eurasians, and 36% of that in the Karitiana, a South American population with extremely low heterozygosity (21).” ↩

  2. 2.

    Prüfer, Kay et al.  “The complete genome sequence of a Neanderthal from the Altai Mountains.”  Nature 505(7481):43–49.  Jan 2, 2014.  A genome paper that sequenced the genome of one Neanderthal woman from the Altai Mountains of Siberia to 52-fold coverage.  Its authors found that her parents were related at the level of half-siblings and that close-relative mating was common among her recent ancestors.  The article cites it for the 96 fixed protein changes, the parents' close kinship and the low heterozygosity of the Altai Neanderthal.

    1. 2a.

      Section Catalog of modern human changes:  “For example, it contains only 96 fixed amino acid substitutions in a total of 87 proteins and in the order of three thousand fixed changes that potentially influence gene expression in present-day humans ( SI 18 ).” ↩ ↩

    2. 2b.

      Table 1:  “This table gives date ranges for two calibrations.  The first assumes human-chimpanzee divergence of 6.5 million years and 1.30% for human-chimp divergence, or a mutation rate of 1 x 10 −9 /bp/year 1 , 2 , 12 .  The second is based on direct measurement of per generation mutation rates 15 – 17 , corresponding to a mutation rate of 0.5 × 10 −9 /bp/year or 13 million years ago for human-chimpanzee divergence, and may fit better with some aspects of the fossil record 45 , 46 .”  Rows, first calibration then second, in thousands of years: Neandertal-Denisova split 190–236 and 381–473; archaic-African split 275–383 and 550–765. ↩

  3. 3.

    Slon, Viviane et al.  “The genome of the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father.”  Nature 561(7721):113–116.  Sep 6, 2018.  A genome study of a long-bone fragment from Denisova Cave in Siberia, sequenced from six DNA extractions.  The genome shows that the individual, called Denisova 11, had a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father.  The article uses it to show that she was a first-generation hybrid, not a member of a population that had mixed for generations.

    1. 3a.

      Section Opening section on the specimen:  “From its cortical thickness, we infer that Denisova 11 was at least 13 years old at death ( Extended Data Figure 1 , Supplementary Information [SI] 1 ).” ↩ ↩

    2. 3b.

      Section Proportions of matching fragments:  “We conclude that Denisova 11 did not originate from a population carrying equal proportions of Neandertal and Denisovan ancestry.  Rather, she was the offspring of a Neandertal mother, who contributed her mtDNA, and a Denisovan father.” ↩ ↩

    3. 3c.

      Section Closing paragraphs before the Methods:  “this suggests that mixing among archaic and modern hominin groups may have been frequent when they met.  However, Neandertals inhabited western Eurasia 10 while Denisovans inhabited yet unknown parts of eastern Eurasia 5 , 17 .  Thus, their zones of overlap may have been restricted in space and time.  This, as well as possibly reduced fitness of individuals of mixed ancestry,”.  The sentence continues into the reasons few such individuals are found. ↩

  4. 4.

    Reich, David et al.  “Genetic history of an archaic hominin group from Denisova Cave in Siberia.”  Nature 468(7327):1053–1060.  Dec 23, 2010.  A genome paper that sequenced DNA from a finger bone found in Denisova Cave in Siberia to 1.9-fold coverage, meaning each position in the genome was read about 1.9 times on average.  It named the group Denisovans, found that they were not part of the Neanderthal gene flow into Eurasians, and estimated that they contributed 4 to 6 percent of the genome of present-day Melanesians.  The article cites it for that 4 to 6 percent figure, for the mitochondrial DNA of the Denisovans, and for the nuclear genome placing them as a sister group of Neanderthals.

    1. 4a.

      Section Abstract:  “Using DNA extracted from a finger bone found in Denisova Cave in southern Siberia, we have sequenced the genome of an archaic hominin to about 1.9-fold coverage.” ↩

    2. 4b.

      Section Abstract:  “This population was not involved in the putative gene flow from Neanderthals into Eurasians; however, the data suggest that it contributed 4–6% of its genetic material to the genomes of present-day Melanesians.  We designate this hominin population 'Denisovans' and suggest that it may have been widespread in Asia during the Late Pleistocene epoch.” ↩ ↩

    3. 4c.

      Section Opening section, paragraph before the heading DNA sequence determination:  “Surprisingly, this mtDNA diverged from the common lineage leading to modern human and Neanderthal mtDNAs about one million years ago 19 , that is, about twice as far back in time as the divergence between Neanderthal and modern human mtDNAs.  However, mtDNA is maternally inherited as a single unit without recombination, and therefore is subject to chance events such as genetic drift, as well as gene flow and positive selection.” ↩ ↩ ↩

    4. 4d.

      Section A model of population history:  “We are able to fit the data with a model that assumes the Denisovans are a sister group of Neanderthals with a population divergence time of one-half to two-thirds of the time to the common ancestor of Neanderthals and humans.” ↩ ↩ ↩

  5. 5.

    Chen, Fahu et al.  “A late Middle Pleistocene Denisovan mandible from the Tibetan Plateau.”  Nature 569(7756):409–412.  May 2019.  The paper that identified the Xiahe jaw as Denisovan.  It read ancient proteins from the dentine of a tooth, dated the calcite crust on the jaw by uranium-thorium in three samples, and compared the jaw and its teeth with other Middle Pleistocene fossils.  Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig is the senior author.  Quotations from the body follow the authors' accepted manuscript, whose wording differs slightly from the printed paper.  Mirror:  Kar.kent.ac.uk

    1. 5a.

      Page 409, section Abstract:  “Here we report a Denisovan mandible, identified by ancient protein analysis, found on the Tibetan Plateau in Baishiya Karst Cave, Xiahe, Gansu, China.  We determine the mandible to be at least 160 thousand years old through U-series dating of an adhering carbonate matrix.” ↩ ↩ ↩

    2. 5b.

      Section Main text, first paragraph:  “This Denisovan-derived adaptation is currently difficult to reconcile with the low altitude of Denisova Cave (700 meters above sea level, masl) and the earliest evidence of high-altitude presence of humans on the Tibetan Plateau around 30-40 thousand years before present (ka BP)”. ↩

    3. 5c.

      Section Main text, second paragraph:  “An in-situ carbonate matrix is present on the bottom of the specimen, allowing determination of a minimum age for the Xiahe mandible.  Three carbonate subsamples were collected for U-Th dating (see SI; Methods).  The bulk 230Th age of 164.5 ± 6.2 ka BP is not statistically different from 155 ± 15 for the uppermost and 163 ± 10 ka BP for the lowermost parts of the crust … Consistency between the ages of the subsamples from different places of the carbonate indicates this crust formed in a short time period at 160 ka BP.” ↩ ↩ ↩

    4. 5d.

      Section Main text, third paragraph:  “There is no evidence for the preservation of ancient DNA in the Xiahe mandible (Methods).  However, palaeoproteomic analysis revealed the survival of an endogenous ancient proteome in a dentine sample, but not in a bone sample … Within this framework, the Xiahe proteome is placed together with the Denisovan high-coverage genome (Denisova Cave individual D3; Bayesian probability: 0.99 … Only one high-coverage Denisovan genome is currently available (D3), limiting our understanding of the proteomic sequence diversity within “Denisovans”.  We therefore assign the Xiahe mandible to a hominin population closely related to the Denisovans from Denisova Cave.” ↩ ↩ ↩

    5. 5e.

      Section Main text, fourth paragraph:  “The body is very robust, relatively low and thick. … Although a mental trigone is weakly expressed, there is no developed chin and the symphysis is strongly receding with an inclination angle of 69°”. ↩

    6. 5f.

      Section Main text, comparisons:  “There is also the marked retromolar space commonly observed in Neanderthals.  However, this feature might be linked to the agenesis of the M3.  The feature of the Xiahe specimen that best links it to the fragmentary fossils from the Denisova Cave is its large dentition.”  “In addition to mesial and distal plate-like roots there is a prominent accessory lingual root that branches off the mesial root below the cervix.  This feature is of particular interest as three-rooted mandibular molars are very rare in non-Asian H. sapiens but appear much more frequently in recent Asian populations”.  Agenesis of the M3 means the third molar never formed.  The extra root is described for the second molars of both Xiahe and Penghu 1. ↩ ↩

    7. 5g.

      Section Main text, closing paragraphs:  “Archaic hominin alleles in modern Himalayan populations, such as the Denisovan-derived EPAS1 allele, may therefore derive from a local archaic hominin on or around the Tibetan Plateau, like the Xiahe hominin.” ↩

  6. 6.

    Xia, Huan et al.  “Middle and Late Pleistocene Denisovan subsistence at Baishiya Karst Cave.”  Nature 632:108–113.  2024.  A study of the animal bones from Baishiya Karst Cave, sorted by collagen fingerprinting and protein analysis.  It found a Denisovan rib among them in a layer dated 48,000 to 32,000 years ago, and sums up the cave's Denisovan evidence:  the jaw, the rib and the sediment DNA.  Mirror:  PMC

    1. 6a.

      Section Methods, Baishiya Karst Cave:  “Baishiya Karst Cave (BKC; 35.45° N, 102.57° E, 3,280 metres above sea level) is located in the Ganjia Basin, northeastern Tibetan Plateau”. ↩ ↩

    2. 6b.

      Section Abstract:  “Using zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry, we identify a new hominin rib specimen that dates to approximately 48–32 thousand years ago (layer 3).  Shotgun proteomic analysis taxonomically assigns this specimen to the Denisovan lineage, extending their presence at Baishiya Karst Cave well into the Late Pleistocene.”  Section Main text, opening:  “Together, they show that Denisovans occupied BKC from at least 160 thousand years ago (ka) to around 60 ka, and possibly up to around 45 ka”. ↩

  7. 7.

    Fu, Qiaomei et al.  “The proteome of the late Middle Pleistocene Harbin individual.”  Science 389(6761):704–707.  Aug 14, 2025.  Ninety-five proteins recovered from the Harbin skull.  The abstract counts three Denisovan-derived variants;  the body of the paper calls them one highly confident and two potential.

    1. 7a.

      Page 704, section Abstract:  “we report 95 endogenous proteins retrieved from a nearly complete cranium from Harbin, China, dating to at least 146,000 years ago and previously assigned to a new species, Homo longi.  This individual has three Denisovan-derived amino acid variants and clusters with Denisova 3, suggesting that the Harbin individual belongs to a Denisovan population.” ↩ ↩

    2. 7b.

      Page 706:  “the identification of one highly confident and two potential Denisovan-derived amino acid variants supports the conclusion that the Harbin individual was from a Denisovan population.”  Page 707, section Discussion and conclusions:  “Through proteomic analysis, we were able to definitively identify this individual as Denisovan.” ↩ ↩ ↩

  8. 8.

    Fu, Qiaomei et al.  “Denisovan mitochondrial DNA from dental calculus of the >146,000-year-old Harbin cranium.”  Cell 188(15):3919–3926.e9.  Jul 24, 2025.  Mitochondrial DNA recovered from tartar on the Harbin skull's teeth, after a tooth and the petrous bone yielded none.  Pääbo's laboratory.  The paper states its own limit:  a small amount of mitochondrial DNA and no nuclear DNA.  Mirror:  Hdl.handle.net

    1. 8a.

      Page 3919, section Summary:  “Although no DNA could be retrieved from a tooth or the petrous bone, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) could be isolated from dental calculus.  The mtDNA falls within Denisovan mtDNA variation and is related to an mtDNA branch carried by early Denisovan individuals in southern Siberia, previously observed in Denisova Cave.” ↩ ↩ ↩

    2. 8b.

      Page 3922, section Discussion:  “fossils from Dali, Jinniushan, and Hualongdong exhibit morphological traits similar to those in the Harbin cranium, making it plausible that they also represent Denisovan populations.”  Section Limitations of the study:  “This study is based on the limited amount of hominin mtDNA that could be retrieved from the dental calculus of the Harbin cranium.” ↩ ↩ ↩

  9. 9.

    Ji, Qiang et al.  “Late Middle Pleistocene Harbin cranium represents a new Homo species.”  The Innovation 2(3):100132.  2021.  The two-page paper that names Homo longi on the Harbin cranium and proposes Homo daliensis for Dali and Hualongdong.  The journal uses article numbers, so quotations are located by section.  Mirror:  PMC

    1. 9a.

      Section Comparative morphology:  “The endocranial capacity is estimated as 1,420 ml, falling in the range of H. sapiens and Neanderthals, and larger than other Homo species such as H. erectus, H. naledi, H. floresiensis, and even some H. heidelbergensis/H. rhodesiensis.” ↩ ↩ ↩

    2. 9b.

      Section Locality and age:  “Middle Pleistocene, upper part of the Upper Huangshan Formation (138–309 ka), near the Dongjiang Bridge in Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province, China.  A reliable minimum U-series age is 148±2 ka.” ↩

  10. 10.

    Ni, Xijun et al.  “Massive cranium from Harbin in northeastern China establishes a new Middle Pleistocene human lineage.”  The Innovation 2(3):100130.  2021.  The companion paper to the naming of Homo longi:  a parsimony and Bayesian analysis of 55 fossil skulls scored individually, with the matrix in its supplement.  Quotations are located by section.  Mirror:  PMC

    1. 10a.

      Section Results and discussion:  “it probably represents a male individual”.  “the ectocranial suture composite scores would suggest an old adult around 50 years old.  However, the tooth wear seems to suggest a younger age.” ↩

    2. 10b.

      Section Abstract:  “It differs from all the other named Homo species by presenting a combination of features, such as long and low cranial vault, a wide and low face, large and almost square orbits, gently curved but massively developed supraorbital torus, flat and low cheekbones with a shallow canine fossa, and a shallow palate with thick alveolar bone supporting very large molars.” ↩ ↩

    3. 10c.

      Section Results and discussion:  “Finally, and perhaps significantly, the morphology and large size of the surviving Harbin M2 (Figure S1, mesiodistal length 13.6 mm and buccolingual width 16.6 mm) are matched most closely in the Late Pleistocene record by the permanent molars from Denisova Cave (Denisovan 4: M2/3, mesiodistal length 13.1 mm, and buccolingual width 14.7 mm; Denisovan 8: M3, mesiodistal length 14.3 mm, and buccolingual width 14.65 mm).” ↩

    4. 10d.

      Section Phylogenetic position of the Harbin cranium:  “The Harbin cranium and Xiahe mandible form a sister group, and they, plus the Dali, Hualongdong, Jinniushan specimens, the European H. antecessor partial cranium, the African Eliye Springs cranium, and Rabat palate, form a monophyletic group.  This clade forms the sister group of the similarly monophyletic H. sapiens clade.  The specimens traditionally grouped in H. heidelbergensis/H. rhodesiensis do not constitute a monophyletic group and the Asian and African H. erectus specimens similarly form a paraphyletic group.” ↩

  11. 11.

    Lacey, Troy.  “Denisovan Fossil Found in Tibet.”  Answers in Genesis.  May 17, 2019.  A web article responding to the Xiahe mandible, which proposes that the Denisovans descended from Togarmah by way of the Altai and Tibet and intermarried with the Sinites.  Neither name has any attested connection with central Asia.

    1. 11a.

      Section The Bible as a Historical Record, paragraph 2:  “it is quite possible that the Denisovans were descendants of Gomer's son Togarmah, whose clan, after settling regions in the Altai and Ural mountain regions, would have passed through Tibet, and some descendants would have eventually ended up in Siberia”. ↩ ↩

  12. 12.

    Lacey, Troy.  “Dragon Man, the Newest Human "Cousin"?”  Answers in Genesis.  Aug 14, 2021.  The Answers in Genesis response to the 2021 papers on the Harbin skull.  It reports the published ages, sets them aside as resting on faulty assumptions, puts the skull after Babel between 2200 and 1800 BC, and suggests it was Denisovan.  An editor's note added later reports the 2025 DNA result.

    1. 12a.

      Section Opening paragraphs:  “But as mentioned many times on our website, there are many assumptions built into radiometric dating and radioisotope isochron dating methods.  Compared against known dates, the dates yielded are faulty.  This skull, in reality, belongs to a post-Babel human, roughly between 2200–1800 BC.”  The article reports the 138,000 to 309,000 and 146,000-year figures correctly before this passage. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

    2. 12b.

      Section Where Does Dragon Man Fit?:  “Dragon Man is a post-Babel human, perhaps of the Denisovan people group, or perhaps a result of intermarriage between post-Babel Denisovans and Neanderthals.  Or perhaps he is only distantly related to those groups.  In any case, he was just as human as you and me.”  An editor's note added below this passage reports that DNA from the skull's dental tartar, published in June 2025, shows it belongs to a Denisovan. ↩ ↩

  13. 13.

    Petr, Martin et al.  “The evolutionary history of Neandertal and Denisovan Y chromosomes.”  bioRxiv, published as Science 369(6511):1653–1656, 25 September 2020, doi 10.1126/science.abb6460.  Mar 9, 2020.  A preprint of a genome study that sequenced the first Denisovan Y chromosomes and the Y chromosomes of three late Neanderthals from ancient bones.  It dates the split between Neanderthal and modern human Y chromosomes to about 370,000 years, well younger than the 588 thousand years that Mendez and colleagues gave in 2016.  The article cites it for that date, for the Neanderthal Y falling outside living men's Y chromosomes, and for the replacement of Neanderthal Y and mitochondrial DNA.

    1. 13a.

      Page 6, lines 129–134:  “We found that the two Denisovan Y chromosomes (Denisova 4 and Denisova 8) split from the modern human lineage around 700 kya (CI: 607-833 kya for the higher coverage Denisova 8, Figure 2B, Table S7.3).  In contrast, the three Neandertal Y chromosomes split from the modern human lineage about 350 kya:  353 kya for Spy 94a (286-449 kya), 369 kya for Mezmaiskaya 2 (326-419 kya) and 339 kya for El Sidrón 1253 (275-408 kya)”. ↩ ↩

  14. 14.

    Line, Peter.  “An overview of the Denisovan puzzle.”  Creation Ministries International.  May 28, 2019.  A 2019 overview by Peter Line, updated 28 June 2019, that goes through the Denisovan fossils and DNA found up to that date from a non-evolutionary viewpoint.  Line argues that if the evolutionary assumptions and long ages are dropped, the Denisovan, Neanderthal and Sima de los Huesos remains could all belong to fully human populations that interbred.  The article uses it as the creationist survey of the Denisovan evidence.

    1. 14a.

      “Long-age 'dates' herein, such as the above, are given to properly explain the research findings being reported on, but reflect the beliefs/assumptions within evolutionism, not those of the author (recent creation c. 6ka).”  The author disclaims the long ages as the assumptions of evolutionism, and gives his own view as recent creation (c. 6ka). ↩ ↩

    2. 14b.

      “Although confusing, one can conclude from the studies described above that the Denisovans were interbreeding with modern humans and Neanderthals.  There is also strong evidence of Neanderthals interbreeding with modern humans.  Between 2 and 4% of the genomes of non-Africans are estimated to be Neanderthal.  Hence, by the biological species concept that makes them all part of the same species.” ↩

    3. 14c.

      “However, if the evolutionary assumptions and long ages are dropped, then a simple explanation is that the Denisovan, Neanderthal and SH Homo heidelbergensis remains all belonged to populations that were fully human, and to various degrees interbred with each other”. ↩ ↩ ↩

    4. 14d.

      “Whilst one cannot yet say with certainty that the Denisovans were Homo erectus , indications are that they were erectus -like, and whether you call them Homo erectus or Homo heidelbergensis (Middle Pleistocene hominins), is in many ways a moot point, as there appears to be little difference between them”. ↩ ↩

    5. 14e.

      “Our modelled estimate for the age of the oldest Denisovan fossil suggests that this group was present at the site as early as 195,000 years ago (at 95.4% probability).  All Neanderthal fossils—as well as Denisova 11, the daughter of a Neanderthal and a Denisovan—date to between 80,000 and 140,000 years ago.”  Douka and colleagues (2019), on the Denisova Cave chronology, as Line quotes them. ↩

    6. 14f.

      “In May 2019 Chen et al. reported on a Denisovan mandible (the right half), referred to as the Xiahe mandible (Figure 5), that had originally been found by a monk in 1980, at 3,280 m altitude, on the Tibetan Plateau in Baishiya Karst Cave, Xiahe county, China.” ↩ ↩

  15. 15.

    Shao, Qingfeng et al.  “Geochemical provenancing and direct dating of the Harbin archaic human cranium.”  The Innovation 2(3):100131.  2021.  Matches the sediment inside the Harbin skull to a lake bed by X-ray fluorescence, rare-earth elements and strontium isotopes, and runs uranium-series on ten drilled samples of the bone.  Their apparent ages run from 62 ± 3 to 296 ± 8 ka.  The five older ones are set aside as having lost uranium;  the five younger ones, 62 ± 3 to 148 ± 2 ka, are kept, and the highest of those is taken as a minimum.  Mirror:  PMC

    1. 15a.

      Section Introduction:  “The Harbin cranium was reportedly discovered in 1933 during construction work when a bridge (Dongjiang Bridge) was built over the Songhua River in Harbin City in Northeastern China (Figure 1).  Because of a long, difficult, and confused history since the discovery, the information about the exact geographic origin and stratigraphical context of the cranium has been lost, impeding its accurate dating.”  The naming paper by Ji and colleagues adds that the skull was donated to Hebei GEO University in 2018. ↩

    2. 15b.

      Section Results, U-series dating:  “The corrected U-series apparent ages are highly scattered, ranging from 62 ± 3 to 296 ± 8 ka”.  “The two youngest U-series apparent ages are 62 ± 3 and 85 ± 4 ka (HH19-1, 2), both obtained on the exposed dentine from the tooth roots of the surviving molar (M2).  The young ages are probably caused by a delayed U-uptake”.  Ten samples were drilled from the skull for these measurements. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

    3. 15c.

      Section Results, U-series dating:  “The best minimum age estimate derived from this data group is the maximum value of the data group: that is 148 ± 2 ka.”  “Leached samples do not provide any useful age information, we therefore regard the age of 146 ka from the younger age group as the most conservative age (minimum age) estimate for the Harbin cranium.”  The paper gives both 148 ± 2 and 146 for the same minimum, a few sentences apart.  The samples called leached are the five older ones, 185 ± 2 to 296 ± 8 ka. ↩ ↩

    4. 15d.

      Section Highlights:  “Uranium-series disequilibrium dating directly on the cranium suggests that the cranium is older than 146 thousand years”. ↩ ↩ ↩

  16. 16.

    The arithmetic for Part 3.  Lacey's window for the Harbin skull, 2200 to 1800 BC,12 is 2,200 + 2,026 − 1 = 4,225 and 1,800 + 2,026 − 1 = 3,825 years before 2026, since there is no year zero.  The skull's minimum age:15 146,000 ÷ 4,225 = 34.6 and 146,000 ÷ 3,825 = 38.2, so 35 to 38.  The youngest apparent bone age:15 62,000 ÷ 4,225 = 14.7 and 62,000 ÷ 3,825 = 16.2, so 15 to 16.  The Xiahe crust:5 160,000 ÷ 4,500 = 35.6, so about 36.  The Genus Homo divides instead by the Flood window of 5,411 to 4,281 years ago that Hardy and Carter give;  on that divisor Harbin's 146,000 years is 27 to 34 times and Xiahe's 160,000 years is 30 to 37 times.  These are this article's own scale figures.  Lacey gives his window for the Harbin skull only and gives no date for the Xiahe jaw. ↩ ↩ ↩

  17. 17.

    Hebert, Jake et al.  “Do Varves, Tree-Rings, and Radiocarbon Measurements Prove an Old Earth?”  Answers Research Journal 9:339–361.  2016.  A long young-earth reply, by three scientists at the Institute for Creation Research and Answers in Genesis, to a critique of young-earth dating.  One passage states where young-earth scientists place accelerated radioactive decay, which is what this article needs from it.

    1. 17a.

      Section Constant Decay Rates and Circular Reasoning:  “While we do believe that the decay rates for the heavier nuclides were accelerated tremendously during the Flood event and (possibly) during the Creation Week (Vardiman, Snelling, and Chaffin 2000, 2005), such accelerated decay would have decelerated at the end of the Flood.  Hence, creation scientists think, as do uniformitarian scientists, that decay rates have been essentially constant during most of the post-Flood period, although there is intriguing evidence suggesting this may not be strictly true (for example, Cardone, Mignani, and Petrucci 2009).  Furthermore, because creation scientists found that the magnitude of the accelerated decay seemed to be proportional to the atomic weights of the parent radioisotopes, they think that the decay rates for the lighter nuclides (such as radiocarbon) would not have been significantly altered even during such episodes of accelerated decay.” ↩ ↩

  18. 18.

    Posth, Cosimo et al.  “Deeply divergent archaic mitochondrial genome provides lower time boundary for African gene flow into Neanderthals.”  Nature Communications 8:16046.  Jul 4, 2017.  A genetics study that rebuilt the complete mitochondrial genome from a Neanderthal femur found at Hohlenstein-Stadel cave in southwestern Germany, and dated it with a Bayesian clock.  Mitochondrial DNA is the small ring of DNA passed down the maternal line.  The article cites it only for the replacement hypothesis; the branch-length problem is worked in the Mitochondrial Eve article. ↩

  19. 19.

    Green, Richard E. et al.  “A draft sequence of the Neandertal genome.”  Science 328(5979):710–722.  May 7, 2010.  A genome paper that sequenced a draft Neanderthal genome of more than 4 billion nucleotides from three bones from Vindija Cave in Croatia.  Its model fit gave the estimate of 1 to 4 percent Neanderthal DNA in people outside Africa, and it counted 78 changes to protein-coding genes that became fixed in modern humans but not in Neanderthals.  The article cites it for those two findings and for the draft genome itself.

    1. 19a.

      Section A catalog of features unique to the human genome:  “We found 78 nucleotide substitutions that change the protein-coding capacity of genes where modern humans are fixed for a derived state and where Neandertals carry the ancestral (chimpanzee-like) state ( Table 2 and table S28 ).  Thus, relatively few amino acid changes have become fixed in the last few hundred thousand years of human evolution.” ↩ ↩

  20. 20.

    Zhang, Dongju et al.  “Denisovan DNA in Late Pleistocene sediments from Baishiya Karst Cave on the Tibetan Plateau.”  Science 370(6516):584–587.  Oct 30, 2020.  A study of the cave's layers, their ages and the mitochondrial DNA left in its sediment, by teams from Lanzhou, Wollongong, the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig and Beijing.  It found Denisovan mitochondrial DNA in layers tens of thousands of years younger than the jaw.  Sediment DNA shows who was in a cave without needing a bone, but it is mitochondrial only.

    1. 20a.

      Page 584, section Abstract:  “A late Middle Pleistocene mandible from Baishiya Karst Cave (BKC) on the Tibetan Plateau has been inferred to be from a Denisovan, an Asian hominin related to Neanderthals, on the basis of an amino acid substitution in its collagen.  Here we describe the stratigraphy, chronology, and mitochondrial DNA extracted from the sediments in BKC.  We recover Denisovan mitochondrial DNA from sediments deposited ~100 thousand and ~60 thousand years ago (ka) and possibly as recently as ~45 ka.” ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

  21. 21.

    Feng, Xiaobo et al.  “The phylogenetic position of the Yunxian cranium elucidates the origin of Homo longi and the Denisovans.”  Science 389(6767):1320–1324.  Sep 25, 2025.  A digital reconstruction of the crushed Yunxian 2 cranium, with parts taken from Yunxian 1, and a tip-dated tree of 57 fossils that places it in the Homo longi clade.  The last two authors named that clade in 2021.  Earlier papers in its reference list call the Yunxian skulls Homo erectus.  A preprint of March 2025 differs from the printed text in wording, not in any number quoted here.  Mirror:  bioRxiv

    1. 21a.

      Page 1320, section Abstract:  “Morphometric and phylogenetic analyses suggest that it is an early member of the Asian H. longi clade, which includes the Denisovans and is the main part of the sister group to the H. sapiens clade.  Both the H. sapiens and H. longi clades have deep roots extending beyond the Middle Pleistocene and probably experienced rapid early diversification.”  The abstract opens:  "Diverse forms of Homo coexisted during the Middle Pleistocene.  Whether these fossil humans represent different species or clades is debated." ↩

  22. 22.

    Snelling, Andrew A.  “How Reliable Are Dates for Human Fossils?”  Answers.  Sep 1, 2018.  A magazine article by the research director of Answers in Genesis, a geologist, explaining each dating method used on human fossils and mapping each to a window of real time after the Flood in a three-row chart.  It is the clearest statement of how the young-earth side recalibrates these dates.

    1. 22a.

      Section chart, first row, Difficult Assumptions:  “Multiple lines of evidence show that radioactive elements decayed rapidly during and soon after the flood, so these “early” dates must be calibrated to the biblical timeframe—a matter of months, years, or decades, not millions of years.” ↩