Revealed, face of girl who’s our 50,000-year-old ancestor
THIS is the face of one of our distant relations who lived 50,000 years ago.
The girl is a Denisovan, a mysterious ancient species of early humans. Until now, what they looked like had been an enigma.
This is because all that remains of them are a few scraps of bone and a few teeth – unlike the betterknown Neanderthals, who left behind more than 50 skeletons.
No artists’ impression of the Denisovans, who lived in Siberia around 50,000 years ago, has been attempted until now.
However, using data extracted from Denisovan DNA, scientists have been able to reconstruct the face of this ancient human.
Scientists believe the Denisovans had much wider faces than either Homo sapiens and the Neanderthals – Homo neanderthalensis.
The images – in the form of a sculpture and portrait and revealed in the Cell journal – were based on just a pea-sized fragment of bone from a young Denisovan girl’s little finger found in Siberia and three teeth and a lower jaw that belonged to another individual.
Scientists were able to use a sophisticated new technique called DNA methylation from which they say can they can extract the size and shape of facial features.
Lead author Dr Liran Carmel, a biologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said: ‘In many ways, Denisovans resembled Neanderthals, but in some traits, they resembled us, and in others they were unique.’
Mystery shrouds the Denisovans, who lived in Asia and Southeast Asia between 200,000 and 50,000 years ago. They shared the planet with modern humans and Neanderthals. All three groups were related to each other – and interbred at times.
Their existence was only discovered in 2008 when the little finger bone was dug out of a Siberian mountain cave called Denisova – after which they are named.
It belonged to a girl aged about seven. Cold weather helped preserve the DNA. Earlier this year a jawbone and teeth from the Tibetan plateau was also found to come from a Denisovan.