What they found did not match Neanderthal DNA. It did not match modern human DNA. It was something else.
The announcement, published in Nature in 2010, described a previously unknown hominin group—an archaic human population distinct from both Neanderthals and modern humans. The group was named after the cave where the only known physical remains had been found. They were called Denisovans.
This was an extraordinary moment in the history of paleoanthropology. Every previous identification of an ancient human group had been based on physical anatomy—the shape of a skull, the proportions of a jaw, the features of a femur. The Denisovans were identified entirely from DNA. No one had yet found a Denisovan skull, a Denisovan jaw, a Denisovan pelvis. They were a population defined by their genome before a single characteristic bone shape had been identified.
The initial Denisovan finger bone was followed by the recovery of additional teeth from the cave—teeth that were notably large by comparison with both modern human and Neanderthal examples. A partial jawbone found in Tibet’s Xiahe County and described in 2019 was identified through protein analysis as Denisovan, providing the first physical remains outside Siberia. A tooth from a cave in Laos may also be Denisovan, pending further analysis.
But the fundamental portrait of Denisovan anatomy remains incomplete. The group is, still, the only hominin population in the fossil record identified primarily through genetic evidence rather than physical form. What Denisovans looked like—their body proportions, their facial structure, the features that would have distinguished them from a Neanderthal or a modern human standing nearby—cannot be fully determined from what has been recovered.