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A fourth Denisovan individual
Viviane Slon1,*, Bence Viola2,3,4, Gabriel Renaud1, Marie-Theres Gansauge1, Stefano Benazzi3,5, Susanna Sawyer1, Jean-Jacques Hublin3, Michael V. Shunkov4,6, Anatoly P. Derevianko4,7, Janet Kelso1, Kay Prüfer1, Matthias Meyer1 and Svante Pääbo1
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Science Advances 07 Jul 2017:
Vol. 3, no. 7, e1700186
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1700186

Abstract
The presence of Neandertals in Europe and Western Eurasia before the arrival of anatomically modern humans is well supported by archaeological and paleontological data. In contrast, fossil evidence for Denisovans, a sister group of Neandertals recently identified on the basis of DNA sequences, is limited to three specimens, all of which originate from Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains (Siberia, Russia). We report the retrieval of DNA from a deciduous lower second molar (Denisova 2), discovered in a deep stratigraphic layer in Denisova Cave, and show that this tooth comes from a female Denisovan individual. On the basis of the number of “missing substitutions” in the mitochondrial DNA determined from the specimen, we find that Denisova 2 is substantially older than two of the other Denisovans, reinforcing the view that Denisovans were likely to have been present in the vicinity of Denisova Cave over an extended time period. We show that the level of nuclear DNA sequence diversity found among Denisovans is within the lower range of that of present-day human populations.

[advances.sciencemag.org]