China's archaeological community recently announced a stunning new discovery! An archaeological team formed by multiple Chinese research institutes and universities has identified five Denisovan remains from over 60,000 bone fragments dating to approximately 167,000–134,000 years ago at the Bat Cave site in Yunnan. Among them, a proximal radius fragment is the world's first confirmed Denisovan radius fossil. The study fills a critical geographic gap in the known distribution of Denisovans and advances understanding of their genetic characteristics and evolutionary history in late Middle Pleistocene China. The findings have been published in the international journal Nature.

The team employed an innovative "morphological prescreening + ZooMS" strategy. From a large assemblage of undiagnostic bone fragments, 22 suspected hominin specimens were selected based on morphology. Mass spectrometry subsequently identified 2 parietal fragments and 1 proximal radius fragment as hominin. Together with 2 ancient human teeth unearthed at the site, 5 samples underwent further proteomic analysis, and all were identified as Denisovan.

This discovery makes Yunnan's Bat Cave the site with the most diverse Denisovan remains globally after Denisova Cave in Siberia, suggesting the region may have offered a relatively warm refuge with abundant food resources during glacial periods. Future ancient genomic data from the transition zone between East and Southeast Asia—such as Yunnan—would help clarify which Denisovan lineages contributed to the formation and dispersal of modern human populations.