@article{d30ae6f494284ee08d4d6aeb461ed887,
title = "A late Middle Pleistocene Denisovan mandible from the Tibetan Plateau",
abstract = "Denisovans are members of a hominin group who are currently only known directly from fragmentary fossils, the genomes of which have been studied from a single site, Denisova Cave1-3 in Siberia. They are also known indirectly from their genetic legacy through gene flow into several low-altitude East Asian populations4,5 and high-altitude modern Tibetans6. The lack of morphologically informative Denisovan fossils hinders our ability to connect geographically and temporally dispersed fossil hominins from Asia and to understand in a coherent manner their relation to recent Asian populations. This includes understanding the genetic adaptation of humans to the high-altitude Tibetan Plateau7,8, which was inherited from the Denisovans. Here we report a Denisovan mandible, identified by ancient protein analysis9,10, 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. The Xiahe specimen provides direct evidence of the Denisovans outside the Altai Mountains and its analysis unique insights into Denisovan mandibular and dental morphology. Our results indicate that archaic hominins occupied the Tibetan Plateau in the Middle Pleistocene epoch and successfully adapted to high-altitude hypoxic environments long before the regional arrival of modern Homo sapiens.",
keywords = "Altitude, Animals, Caves, Fossils, Hominidae/anatomy & histology, Human Migration, Humans, Mandible/anatomy & histology, Phylogeny, Tibet, Tooth/anatomy & histology",
author = "Fahu Chen and Frido Welker and Chuan-Chou Shen and Bailey, {Shara E} and Inga Bergmann and Simon Davis and Huan Xia and Hui Wang and Roman Fischer and Freidline, {Sarah E} and Tsai-Luen Yu and Skinner, {Matthew M} and Stefanie Stelzer and Guangrong Dong and Qiaomei Fu and Guanghui Dong and Jian Wang and Dongju Zhang and Jean-Jacques Hublin",
note = "Funding Information: Acknowledgements We thank the sixth Gung-Thang Living Buddha, the anonymous monk, L. L. Wang and her husband for providing us the opportunity to study the fossil; D. Madsen, J. Brantingham, D. Rhode, C. Perreault, J. S. Yang, T. Cheng, X. K. Shen, J. T. Yao, Z. X. Yang, J. Chen, X. Z. Huang, M. H. Qiu and C.-R. Huang for their assistance with the fieldwork and in the laboratory; members of the local government of Xiahe County and Ganjia town for help, the monks in the Baishiya temple and people from Bajiao Ancient City for their support of the fieldwork; O. J{\"o}ris, G. Smith, P. Ungar and R. Gr{\"u}n for discussions and comments; many curators and colleagues who, over the years, gave us access to recent and fossil hominin specimens for computed tomography scanning, photogrammetry or analysis; E. Trinkaus for providing comparative data; H. Temming, S. Tuepke, C. Molenaar and Diondo for their technical assistance; S. P{\"a}{\"a}bo, V. Slon and A. Ayinuer-Petri for ancient DNA analytical support. We received support from the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Pan-Third Pole Environment Study for a Green Silk Road (Pan-TPE) (XDA20040000) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (41620104007). D.J.Z. received support from National Natural Science Foundation of China (41771225). Fieldwork in 2018 was supported by the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition (Project no. 4). U–Th dating was supported by the Science Vanguard Research Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology (107-2119-M-002-051) and the Higher Education Sprout Project of the Ministry of Education, Taiwan (107L901001). J.-J.H. and F.W. thank the Max Planck Society for providing financial support. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2019, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.",
year = "2019",
month = may,
day = "16",
doi = "10.1038/s41586-019-1139-x",
language = "English",
volume = "569",
pages = "409--412",
journal = "Nature",
issn = "0028-0836",
publisher = "Nature Publishing Group",
number = "7756",
}