Scientists Reconstruct Face of Mysterious Ancient Humans for the First Time

For the first time ever, scientists have revealed what one of our most mysterious ancient relatives, the Denisovans, may have looked like. The breakthrough, announced on June 18th, was made by a team of researchers led by Dr. Qiaomei Fu after studying DNA preserved in the tooth plaque of a 160,000-year-old skull found in a Siberian cave.

“We’ve had their DNA for years, but now we finally have a face,” said Dr. Qiaomei Fu, a paleogeneticist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in an interview with The New York Times.

The Denisovans are a close relative of modern humans and Neanderthals. They were first discovered in 2010 through a small fragment of pinkie bone. Due to the limited remains, scientists have struggled for years to piece together what they looked like.

The breakthrough came from DNA found in the tooth plaque of an ancient skull. The New York Times states, “It’s all the more special because the skull was nearly lost to science. In 1933, a laborer in the city of Harbin, China, discovered it on a construction site and, suspecting it was valuable, hid it in an abandoned well. But he never returned to retrieve it and did not breathe a word of it until shortly before his death.” The laborer hid the skull at that time because of Japanese occupation, and he feared that the Japanese would seize the valuable fossil. “He told his family about the skull, and they fished it out of the well in 2018 and donated it to Hebei GEO University.” The skull was found in a construction site, hidden in an abandoned well, removed from the well, and donated to the Hebei GEO University. There, paleoanthropologist Qiang Ji analyzed it and estimated that the skull dated back to around 146,000 years ago. The skull was identified to be it’s own species, and that species was named Homo longi. Dr. Fu and many other scientists, however, suspected that the Homo longi may be a Denisovan. After receiving permission, Dr. Fu and her colleagues looked for genetic material from a piece of tooth and the bone that holds the inner ear, and after finding no DNA, they looked in the hardened plaque of the tooth and found tiny amounts of DNA. After analyzing the DNA, Dr. Fu and her team determined that the skull belonged to a Denisovan, and they were able to get a rough picture of what a Denisovan’s face may have looked like.

The reconstructed Denisovan face shares some features with both Neanderthals and modern humans, but also has their own unique traits. According to National Geographic, “They had a flat face, large teeth, and strong cheekbones.”

The reconstructed face is , giving us a glimpse of what our past relatives were like.

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/18/science/ancient-human-denisovan-dna.html

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/controversial-dragon-man-skull-confirmed-to-be-a-denisovan