A 130,000-year-old human tooth found in a cave in Laos…is most likely a mysterious human “Denisovan” | Business Insider Japan
A Denisovan reconstruction (left) and a photograph of a tooth found in Laos (right).
Mayan Harel/Fabrice Demeter (University of Copenhagen/CNRS Paris)/Insider
- A tooth found in a cave in Laos has been identified as belonging to an ancient people called the Denisovans.
- The tooth, believed to belong to a girl, is the first evidence that Denisovans lived in Southeast Asia.
- This is about to unravel the mystery of how Denisovan genes were passed on to people in Southeast Asia today.
The first traces of the now-extinct Denisovans have been found in Southeast Asia.
Scientists knew that some Denisovan genes had been passed on to people in today’s Southeast Asia, so they scoured the region for signs of Denisovans. However, it’s hard to find.
A tooth of a young Denisovan aged more than 130,000 years has been found in a cave in Laos.
An associate professor at the Flinders Institute of Microarchaeology said: “Why is Denisovan DNA found in these Southeast Asians but not in Eurasia or elsewhere? It’s a big mystery. ” said Mike Morley, a co-author of the dental study, in a press release.
“This tooth is the so-called ‘killer,'” he said.
Research on this tooth, discovered in 2018 at the Tam Ngu Hao 2 cave site in Laos, was published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications on May 17, 2022.
Teeth found in Laos.
natural communication
Many Denisovan remains have previously been found in Siberia.
Denisovans are an ancient human species that became extinct along with Neanderthals, Naledi, Bodos, and others. Denisovans are one of the most mysterious ancient humans, and only a few traces of them have been found so far. Most of the remains found so far were found in the Denisova Cave in Siberia, northern Laos.
Scientists believe that Denisovans migrated to Southeast Asia, where they interbred with the ancestors of modern humans. A 2020 study found some Denisovan genes in some populations in Southeast Asia.
Laos is the second place outside Siberia where evidence of Denisovans has been found, after Tibet. The Siberian caves where the first Denisovan remains were discovered in 2008 are thought to have been inhabited by Denisovans between about 300,000 and about 50,000 years ago. Finds in the cave suggest that Denisovans may have used stone tools and may have interbred with ancestors of modern humans and Neanderthals.
Additionally, a 2020 study revealed that a jawbone found in the Baishiya Cave in Xiahe County, Gansu Province, China, belonged to a Denisovan who lived about 160,000 years ago.
Denisovan portrait based on skeletal features inferred from skeletal DNA.
Maya Harrell
Clues to the Origin of Teeth
Dental DNA is poorly preserved and unreadable in Laotian cave environments. Still, we have some clues about its origin.
Protein analysis of the tooth indicated it likely came from a girl aged between 3.5 and 8.5 years. The internal structure of the tooth was similar to Denisovan specimens found in Tibet, suggesting that the girl was Denisovan.
Dating the rocks surrounding the teeth also showed that the girl lived between 164,000 and 131,000 years ago.
Inside the Laotian cave where the tooth was found.
Fabrice Demeter (University of Copenhagen/CNRS Paris)
Fossil-rich cave discovered by local children
In 2018, local children told scientists that a cave in Laos was littered with fossils, University of Illinois paleoanthropologist Laura Shackelford, a co-author of the paper, told The New York Times.
Upon entering the cave where the children found the fossilized bones, they saw an alcove the size of a closet, “all the walls and ceiling filled with bones and teeth,” Shakelford said.
“It’s like it’s packed.”
Most of them were bones from pigs, deer and pygmy elephants, some with tooth marks that porcupines brought in and gnawed on to brush their teeth, the New York Times reported. Among the fossils, scientists found a single tooth from an ancient human.
[Translation: An ancient tooth found in a cave proves that ancient humans living in Southeast Asia more than 130,000 years ago were extinct]
(Translated by Ayako Nakata, edited by Toshihiko Inoue)