The Face Of a Human Kind is Recovered

15 years ago, Qiaomei Fu, a Chinese paleontologist, discovered a new kind of human. She found a fragment of a finger bone in a Siberian cave known as Denisova. The DNA in the bone showed a third human lineage no one had discovered before. Dr. Fu named the kind Denisovans. After all these years, we have found a new clue to the Denisovan’s facial features.

All this history could have been long gone, if not for a certain someone. In 1933, a harborer found a skull in a construction site in Harbin, China. He felt as if it had immense value and hid it in an unknown will. This man kept his lips sealed about his little secret treasure until years before his passing. He told his family. Shortly after, in 2018, they had recovered the skull from the abandoned place and donated the artifact to Hebei GEO University.

Like many, Dr. Fu was curious whether this mysterious skull had relations to Denisovans. With countless days of inspecting the tiny tooth samples from the artifact, her team had concluded that the Harbin skull was indeed, a Denisovan. This led to a full idea of how the kind looked like. They had rather flatter faces, small chins, broad mouths, and round noses. Similar to how trolls are portrayed in movies.

This discovery was an extreme breakthrough for the science world. Scientists have finally uncovered the complete image of Denisovans – a completely new kind of Homo Sapiens. Now, researchers are one step closer to recovering our past.

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