Natalia Belousova (Russian Academy of Sciences) and Tom Higham taking samples from the Main Chamber at Denisova Cave
SERGEY ZELINSKI, RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
The Denisova Cave in Russia, first excavated about 40 years ago, holds fossil clues to the hominin branches on the evolutionary tree that lie close to Homo sapiens. Efforts to track the two species in time have been held back by the limits of different dating methods including radiocarbon dating, which is typically only useful for samples up to roughly 50,000 years old.
Now, two reports in Nature today (January 30) have used several methods to analyze the sediment, fossils, and artifacts of the Denisova cave to paint a clearer picture of who was there and when. The reports suggest that Denisovans and Neanderthals overlapped at this Stone Age hot spot for thousands of years, and that modern Homo sapiens may have once dwelled there, too.
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