Key Laboratory of Alpine Ecology (LAE), CAS Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences and Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Key Laboratory of Western China's Environmental Systems (Ministry of Education), College of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China.
Nature. 2019 May;569(7756):409-412. doi: 10.1038/s41586-019-1139-x. Epub 2019 May 1.
Denisovans are members of a hominin group who are currently only known directly from fragmentary fossils, the genomes of which have been studied from a single site, Denisova Cave in Siberia. They are also known indirectly from their genetic legacy through gene flow into several low-altitude East Asian populations and high-altitude modern Tibetans. The lack of morphologically informative Denisovan fossils hinders our ability to connect geographically and temporally dispersed fossil hominins from Asia and to understand in a coherent manner their relation to recent Asian populations. This includes understanding the genetic adaptation of humans to the high-altitude Tibetan Plateau, which was inherited from the Denisovans. Here we report a Denisovan mandible, identified by ancient protein analysis, found on the Tibetan Plateau in Baishiya Karst Cave, Xiahe, Gansu, China. We determine the mandible to be at least 160 thousand years old through U-series dating of an adhering carbonate matrix. The Xiahe specimen provides direct evidence of the Denisovans outside the Altai Mountains and its analysis unique insights into Denisovan mandibular and dental morphology. Our results indicate that archaic hominins occupied the Tibetan Plateau in the Middle Pleistocene epoch and successfully adapted to high-altitude hypoxic environments long before the regional arrival of modern Homo sapiens.
丹尼索瓦人是人类群体的一员，目前仅直接通过西伯利亚丹尼索瓦洞穴的一个遗址研究的部分化石，以及从其基因组得知。他们也间接地通过基因流进入几个低海拔的东亚人群和高海拔的现代藏人而遗传给了这些人群。缺乏形态学上的丹尼索瓦人化石，限制了我们将亚洲地理和时间上分散的古人类化石联系起来，并以一种连贯的方式理解它们与最近的亚洲人群的关系的能力。这包括了解人类对青藏高原这一高海拔地区的遗传适应，而这种适应是从丹尼索瓦人那里继承下来的。在这里，我们报告了在中国甘肃夏河白石崖溶洞发现的一个通过古代蛋白分析鉴定的丹尼索瓦人下颌骨。我们通过对附着的碳酸盐基质的铀系测年确定下颌骨至少有 16 万年的历史。夏河标本提供了丹尼索瓦人在阿尔泰山脉以外的直接证据，其分析为丹尼索瓦人下颌和牙齿形态提供了独特的见解。我们的研究结果表明，远古人类在中更新世就已经占领了青藏高原，并且在现代人类到达该地区之前很久就成功适应了高海拔缺氧环境。
