Meet Denny, the ancient mixed-heritage mystery girl

A few years ago in a cave in Russia, archaeologists found a bone belonging to an ancient human who had a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father. 

She was nicknamed Denny: this is the only first-generation hybrid hominin ever found.

Further detailed studies of the genes of Denny’s Denisovan father were found to contain fragments of Neanderthal DNA. These indicated that interbreeding between the two species had also occurred at an earlier time.

Past studies have provided clear evidence that Denisovans and modern humans interbred, and also that Neanderthals and modern humans mated with each. Now, there is dramatic evidence of Denisovan and Neanderthal intermingling.

After the unearthing of a Neanderthal-Denisovan fossil, UK scientists are using groundbreaking techniques to learn more of the species’ complex bonds with humans

Robin McKie

Of all the ancient peoples that have been studied by scientists, none has set puzzles quite so profound as those left behind by the Denisovans. Only a few tiny pieces of bone and teeth have ever been found of this long extinct species – fragmentary remains that would all fit snugly inside a cigarette packet.

Yet these fossil scraps suggest that Denisovans had a considerable influence on people today. Up to 6% of the genes now found in modern New Guineans and 3-5% of the DNA of aboriginal Australians is made up of Denisovan DNA, scientists have discovered. The gene that allows Tibetan people to survive high altitudes is also believed to have been inherited from them. This information tells us one thing: tens of thousands of years ago, modern humans encountered Denisovans – and had sex with them. It is a startling discovery that raises many basic questions. Just who were the Denisovans? What did they look like? And what were their relations with the Neanderthals, their closest evolutionary cousins? Did they have tools and art like the Neanderthals?

At present, researchers have few answers to these questions, such is the paucity of the Denisovan fossil record. But a new project, Finder – Fossil Fingerprinting and Identification of New Denisovan Remains from Pleistocene Asia – which has been just been launched with backing from the European Research Council, aims to put that right and transform our knowledge of the Denisovans and their relations with both Homo sapiens and the Neanderthals. All three species interbred, we now know, and a key aim of the study is to help understand these complex bondings: Denisovans will be a special focus, however.

We aim to find out where they lived, when they came into contact with modern humans – and why they went extinct,” says project leader Katerina Douka, of the Max Planck Institute in Jena, Germany and a visitor at Oxford University.

Denisovan research faces a basic problem, however – paucity of fossils. Denisova Cave in Siberia – where their eponymous remains were first found in 2010 – is our sole source, and only a handful of fossils have ever been dug up there (along with several Neanderthal pieces).

“It is a wonderful site,” says Tom Higham, deputy director of Oxford University’s Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit and an adviser to Finder. “It is cool inside, so DNA in bones does not disintegrate too badly. However, nearly all the bones there have been chewed up by hyenas and other carnivores.” As a result, Denisova’s cave floor is littered with tiny, unidentifiable bone fragments.

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