Archaeologists excavating a cave in southwestern China have discovered fossilized remains belonging to a mysterious group of extinct hominids, revealing new details about their lifestyle.
Among the remains are 4 teeth, part of an arm bone, and two fragments of a skull, bringing the total number of known Denisovan fossils to more than 20. The discovery also reinforces the importance of Bianfu Cave in the mountains of Yunnan Province for studying human origins.
In addition to the seven Denisovan fossils, researchers found tools made of bone and stone, fossilized pollen and animal remains, painting a picture of Denisovan life in the region's coniferous forests 167,000 to 134,000 years ago, according to two studies published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
“We initially identified some scattered teeth, and then we identified, among a huge amount of animal fossils, the bones, but finding the fragments was very difficult at first,” said Hao Li, a research professor at the Tibetan Plateau Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, and co-author of the two studies.
"We are very lucky because this is the first site in southern China where there is a direct link between Denisovan fossils and rich cultural remains. This is very rare," he added.
Previous research was largely based on single finds, such as a skull recovered from a well in northeastern China, and a jaw found by a fishing boat on the seabed.
Scientists first identified the Denisovans in 2010, through ancient DNA extracted from a small finger bone found in the Denisova Cave in Siberia, from which this group derived its name. This was the first identification of a previously unknown hominin group based on DNA alone.
It is known that Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo sapiens lived in Denisova Cave and intermingled with each other, making it difficult to extract clear details about the Denisovan lifestyle from the site alone.
As for Bienfo Cave, it appears that it was inhabited by Denisovans alone for a long time, which allowed researchers to study the fossils in their original context, along with tools and other remains, and to derive new information about the customs and behaviors of this group.
Scientists have hypothesized that Denisovans lived in different regions of Asia, and today's populations in Southeast Asia and Oceania carry the greatest amount of Denisovan DNA, indicating that they interbred with modern humans in these regions tens of thousands of years ago. However, most of their fossils have been found in northern Asia.
Bianfu Cave represents only the third site where Denisovans have been conclusively proven to have lived, and shows that they adapted to diverse environments, from the mountains of Siberia and the Tibetan Plateau to subtropical regions.
The researchers examined 60,000 bone fragments from the cave, and identified about 24 fragments similar to hominin bones. Although no ancient DNA was found preserved in it, protein analysis showed that 3 bones and two teeth belonged to Denisovan, while two other teeth were classified based on their shape and comparison with known teeth of this species.
Qiaomi Fu, a professor at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing and co-author of the study, said that DNA degrades faster than proteins and is difficult to preserve in fossils more than 100,000 years old, in addition to the relatively warmer climate in Yunnan that has hampered its preservation.
Fu was part of the team that first identified Denisovans in 2010.
The team dug three trenches, 6.6 meters deep, at the cave site, one of which resulted in finding human fossils in two layers of sediment dating back to between 167,000 and 134,000 years ago. As for stone tools, they were found in 10 layers, indicating that the site was inhabited between 190,000 and 70,000 years ago.
One of the two studies focused on marks found on animal bones and stone tools, and the researchers concluded that the Denisovans made tools from stone and bone, and hunted large game, including water buffalo, gaur, red deer, and sika deer, and extracted bone marrow for food.
Lee described the tools as “practical technology,” explaining that the Denisovans did not invest much time in making them, and that this reflects flexible adaptation to their needs. It is likely that Denisovans were the only inhabitants of the site, while the team intends to examine the cave sediments for hominin DNA.
“We can say that stone tool technology remained stable and continuous, as did hunting strategy,” he said.
Besides expanding the known geographic range of the Denisovans' distribution, the new discoveries include their first known arm bone. Although there is limited information that can be extracted from the bone fragment, the radius bone was short and somewhat similar to the radius bone of a Neanderthal, according to Ryan McRae, a paleoanthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History.
The location of the biceps connection may have made elbow flexion more efficient, said McRae, who was not involved in the research.
"But the site itself is much more interesting. It tells us about Denisovan settlement of a single site over a relatively long period of time, and it also fills some geographical gaps in our understanding of the Denisovans," he added.
Until last year, scientists knew little about what Denisovans looked like, as most of their fossils were just small fragments. But in 2025, Fu and her colleagues published research on the “Dragon Man” skull, which was found in 2018 after remaining hidden at the bottom of a well in the city of Harbin in northeastern China for decades.
The researchers linked the genetic material extracted from the skull to the Denisovan, which allowed them to draw the features of this species and suggest a scientific name for it, Homo longi.
Scientists still do not know much about the Denisovans, as scientists only have a finger bone, a fragment of a rib, and a forearm bone to study their appearance, lifestyle, and disappearance.
Yunnan, whose name means "south of the clouds," may hold some answers to these questions. In recent years, many sites dating back to the Stone Age have been discovered there, including rare wooden tools dating back 300,000 years.
Lee said the region provided ancient hominins with a favorable climate and abundant resources of plants and animals, and was likely a meeting point between North and South Asia.
He concluded: “We are on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau, at an altitude of more than 2,000 metres, but we are not at high altitude. This area is rich in biodiversity and would have provided abundant resources for ancient hominins.”
