
Chinese scientists have reconstructed the face of the Denisovans using fossils from Xujiayao, providing the first look at the mysterious ancient human species.
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Denisovans were previously known only through DNA and fossil fragments, thought to have lived in Siberia and Asia.
Chinese scientists have finally put a face onto the Denisovans, a mysterious species of ancient humans who were previously known only through the evidence of their DNA and fossil fragments.
The hominids were thought to have lived in parts of Siberia and East and Southeast Asia thousands of years ago.
The work of reconstructing their face was based on fossils excavated from Xujiayao, a major archaeological site in northern China’s Nihewan Basin, between 1976 and 1979.
Scientists also confirmed that the collection of ancient human remains belonged to the Denisovan lineage, allowing them to reconstruct what they looked like.

A new ecological paper published in the international academic journal Nature shows that a giant wave tank experiment shows that salt marshes can survive extreme wave events with only minor erosion. The research was completed by Pim W. J. M. Willemsen and other scholars at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

The National Bureau of Statistics of China announced on the 23rd that China’s innovation index in 2025 will be 185.5, an increase of 6.4% over the previous year. Among them, the four major sub-field indexes of innovation environment, input, output and effectiveness have all achieved growth, the talent pool in science and engineering has expanded, and basic research funding has grown rapidly.

The team of Professor Li Liang of Huazhong University of Science and Technology and French scholars confirmed for the first time from a thermodynamic perspective that the phonon thermal Hall effect originates from the intrinsic mechanism of the material, providing key experimental criteria for a controversy that has plagued the academic community for 21 years. The results were published in Science on October 23.

China's Shandong Provincial Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources has undertaken 83% of domestic scientific drilling and ultra-deep hole core drilling projects of more than 3,000 meters, and has achieved a number of major breakthroughs in ultra-deep drilling and prospecting technology in Shaanxi Weihe Basin, West Sichuan Methylka Lithium Mine, Anhui Chating Copper Polymetallic Mine, and the Yellow River Delta.
The team of Academician Liu Zhongmin of the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has made a breakthrough in the field of molecular sieve catalysis, achieving a metal-free and ligand-free carbonylation reaction of propylene and ethylene, revealing the precise control of the catalytic reaction by the molecular sieve channel structure, and providing a new path for green chemical industry.
Researcher Wang Shutao from the Institute of Physics and Chemistry Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Professor Wilhelm Baslot from the University of Bonn in Germany jointly won the 2026 International Biomimetic Engineering Award for Outstanding Contribution. This award is selected every three years and is a landmark academic honor in the field of international bionic engineering.