Scientists say that the old jaw bone in the sea belongs to mysterious human ancestors

The old jaw bone discovered in Taiwan belongs to a mysterious group of the first human ancestors called DenisovanThe scholars mentioned Thursday.

Little is relatively little for Denisovanz, an extinct group of human cousins ​​who interacted with primitive human beings and our types of sane.

“The Denisovan fossils are very scarce,” the study author Takumi Tsotaya at the University of Graduate Studies for Advanced Studies in Japan said.

To date, the only well -known Denisovan fossils include partial jaw bones, some teeth and part of the finger bone in the caves in Siberia and Tibet. Some scientists believe that the fossils in a cave in Laos may also belong to Denisovan.

Tsutaiah said that the potential recognition of the jaw bone from Taiwan, where Denisovan expands the region in which scientists know these ancient people once.

“Denisovan should be able to adapt to a wide range of habitats.” Reuters news news agency.

The partial jaw bone was first recovered when the fishing process was scized at the Penghu channel near the Taiwan Strait. After selling it to an ancient store, it was monitored by a mosque and bought it in 2008, and then donated it to the Taiwanese Natural Sciences Museum in Taiwan.

Based on the formation of the existing marine invertebrates, Al -Ahfar dated to the Playstoine era. But exactly what are the early types of human ancestors that belonged to mystery.

The case of Al -Ahfouri made it impossible to study the old DNA. But recently, scientists in Taiwan, Japan and Denmark have been able to extract some protein sequence from the incomplete jaw bone.

An analysis showed that some protein sequence resembles those in Denisovan’s fossil genome in Siberia. The results were It was published in the magazine Science.

While the new research is promising, Rick Pots, director of the Smithsonian Foundation project, said that he wants to see more data before Al -Ahfouri’s confirmation in Taiwan as Denisovan.

Pots, who did not participate in the new research, praised the study for “a great function to restore some proteins.” But he added that such a small slice of materials may not give a complete picture.

At the same time, at least three groups of human ancestors – Denisovanz, Nandartals, Aqlu Homo – coexisted in Eurasia and Sometimes interbredThe researchers say.

“We can identity of primitive elements and Denisovan elements” in the DNA of some people alive today, Tsutaiah said.

Scientists still do not know exactly why Denisovan has become extinct.

“We have a little archaeological and excavating information about Denisovan, which we can only speculate the reason for their disappearance,” Wilker told Reuters. “The permanent inheritance, though, is that some human population in East and Southeast Asia holds some Denisovan’s origin in their genomics today.”