| Denisovan | |
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| Scientific classification |
The Denisovans were a species or subspecies of archaic human that lived during the mid to late Pleistocene. First discovered in 2010 in a cave in the Altai mountains of Russia. Using only a few bones, the DNA sequence was surprising in that it did not match any other known hominid, and genetic anaylsis indicates the last common ancestor for the Denisovans and the branch that led to Neanderthals and Modern humans was around 1 million years ago.
Their name currently is either Homo altai, Homo sapiens altai, Homo denisovan, or Homo sapiens denisovan.
Their morphology is mostly unknown, though it is inferred that they looked similar to Neanderthals or possibly Homo erectus, and had very large teeth. It is known that they intermarried into the East Asians, Aborigines, and Melanesians during the later Pleistocene. They vanished around 60-40,000 years ago.
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