Denisovan Fossils Found in Southwest China for First Time

Researchers have identified five Denisovan fossils from a cave in Yunnan Province, the first such remains ever discovered in southwest China, in a find that fills a major geographic gap in the known range of this extinct human species. The remains, dated to roughly 167,000 to 134,000 years ago, were recovered from Bianfu Cave — “Bat Cave” — by a team led by Fu Qiaomei of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and were published in two papers in Nature on September 9.

Denisovans were first identified in 2010 from a single finger bone found in Siberia, and have remained among the most enigmatic members of the human family tree ever since. The new Yunnan site, the researchers say, is now the richest collection of Denisovan remains anywhere outside Denisova Cave itself.

What Was Found

The five remains consist of two parietal skull fragments, one proximal radius — the forearm bone just below the elbow — and two hominin teeth. The radius fragment is the first confirmed Denisovan forearm bone in the world, and its mosaic of anatomical features points to distinctive biomechanical demands and behavioral adaptations.

Bianfu Cave, an abandoned quarry, was first stumbled upon in 2019 during an ecological restoration project, according to Xinhua News. Scientists subsequently excavated thousands of objects from the site, including more than 1,300 stone tools and over 1,600 identifiable animal remains, primarily deer and other ruminants. Cut and scrape marks on the bones indicate the tools were used to break bones, cut meat, and scrape hides.

Crucially, no traces of any other human species appeared in the deposits spanning some 120,000 years of occupation, suggesting the toolmakers were Denisovans themselves.

How the Team Found a Needle in a Haystack

Identifying Denisovan remains is extraordinarily difficult. The species is known almost entirely from genetic and protein evidence, and its bones are nearly indistinguishable from those of other ancient humans.

To find them, the team combined a novel “morphological pre-screening plus ZooMS” strategy — Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry, a technique that identifies species from collagen protein signatures. From more than 60,000 bone fragments, they selected 22 suspected hominin pieces, of which three were confirmed as Homo bones via ZooMS. Protein extraction and sequencing, followed by single amino acid polymorphism and phylogenetic analysis, confirmed that all five samples were Denisovan.

As Nature reported, ancient proteins — hardier than ancient DNA — have become the most reliable means of identifying Denisovan remains, and the screening approach dramatically improved efficiency over methods that rely on ZooMS alone.

A Window Into How Denisovans Lived

For a species defined largely by its genes, the Yunnan haul offers something rare: a portrait of daily life. The associated animal bones, the researchers argue, reveal subsistence strategies and a landscape the Denisovans knew intimately.

Ben Marwick, an archaeologist at the University of Washington who was not involved in the study, called the site unusually complete. “This site’s the full package,” he told Science News. “It’s the first site that we have with a long, rich sequence that’s uniquely associated with Denisovans.”

Shara Bailey, a paleoanthropologist at New York University, echoed the point. The cave “tells us a little about how Denisovans actually lived on the landscape,” she said. “Denisovans are becoming a bit less mysterious.”

Bence Viola, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Toronto who has studied the Siberian remains, said the butchered deer bones show a species that “adapted to their environment. They hunted different things in different ways,” providing “a much more complete picture” of Denisovan life.

Why Southwest China Matters

Yunnan sits in the transition zone between East Asia and Southeast Asia — closer than any previous site to the regions where Denisovans and modern humans may have intermingled. That geography makes the find especially promising for a central question in human evolution: which Denisovan lineages contributed DNA to living populations.

Many modern groups carry Denisovan ancestry, including populations in Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Tibet, New Guinea, and Australia — a legacy of ancient interbreeding. Fu said that obtaining more ancient DNA, especially genomic data from the East Asia–Southeast Asia transition, could help clarify which Denisovan branches shaped modern humans as they formed and dispersed.

“This is not just an occasional fossil,” Fu said, underscoring that the remains point to extended habitation rather than a fleeting presence.

The region may also have served as a relatively warm refuge with abundant food during glacial periods, helping explain why Denisovans persisted there for tens of thousands of years. Tool dates at the site stretch from 190,000 to 70,000 years ago, suggesting occupation lasting at least 30,000 years and possibly as long as 120,000.

A Field Coming Into Focus

The discovery is the latest in a string of advances that have pulled Denisovans from the shadows. In 2025, researchers confirmed that a skull found near Harbin in northeastern China was Denisovan, and a jawbone recovered from Taiwan Strait sediments was similarly identified. Only a handful of sites worldwide have produced identified Denisovan fossils; Bianfu Cave is the latest, and one of the southernmost.

That scarcity is what makes the Yunnan material so valuable. With so few fossils, Viola conceded, knowing little about how Denisovans lived has been “a little frustrating” — a frustration this site helps relieve.

As Science and Technology Daily reported, the work was a collaboration between the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, the Yunnan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, and other institutions.

What to Watch

The findings, detailed in the papers by Ruan et al. and Rao et al. (doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10997-4 and doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10976-9), leave open the most tantalizing question: whether DNA can be recovered from the Yunnan remains. Ancient DNA from a warm, humid environment is far harder to preserve than the protein the team relied on, but success would let scientists directly compare these Denisovans with their Siberian and Tibetan relatives.

For now, the fossils stand as a reminder of how much of humanity’s deep past remains buried — and how a single quarry, opened for an ecological project, can rewrite the map of an extinct people. As Haaretz noted, the Bat Cave has revealed a Denisovan culture that was, until now, largely imagined.