The only definitive Denisovan fossils have been found in North Asia -- in the eponymous Denisova cave in Siberia's Altai Mountains in Russia. Genetic evidence, however, has tied the archaic humans most closely to places much further south -- in what's now the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and Australia.
"This demonstrates that the Denisovans were likely present also in southern Asia. And it supports the results of geneticists who say that modern humans and the Denisovans might have met in Southeast Asia," said study author Clément Zanolli, a researcher in paleoanthropology at CNRS, the French National Center for Scientific Research and the University of Bordeaux.
