Portrait of a Denisovan was obtained using genetic analysis

In 2010, the existence of another human species apart from the Neanderthals and humans was discovered: the Denisovans. Most of the information that we have about the species or subspecies has been obtained from a small piece of the pinky finger of a female infant that lived 50.000 years ago. The bone was found in Russia, in the cave of Denisova. It has been possible to extract de whole genome of the individual from that sample. However, until now we had no evidence of their physical appearance.

A sculpture of the head of a juvenile female Denisovan based on the explained technique.

During this research the methylations of the genome were studied. These epigenetic marks are the ones responsible for turning on and off different genes generating variation in the physical appearance without changing the DNA sequence. In order to identify the specific effect that the methylation had, the genome of the current humans with those same epigenetic changes were studied. Especially, the changes that were reflected in the morphology of the skeleton. Before using this technique with the Denisovan genome, it was tried with the known genomes of chimpances and Neanderthals.

Many differences were found between Denisovan and the two mentioned species, most of them on the cranium. The results confirmed what was already known: the Denisovans were more similar to the Neanderthals than to the H. sapiens.

Source: https://elpais.com/elpais/2019/09/19/ciencia/1568902643_582006.html

Article mentioned: Gokhman D. et al. (September, 2019). Reconstructing Denisovan Anatomy Using DNA Methylation Maps. Cell, 179(1) 180-192