Denisovans towered over their contemporaries and munched a bunch of meat
Nitrogen isotopes within the tibia match what you’d expect from a highly carnivorous creature with a meat-dominated diet, similar to European Neanderthals. Curiously, the analysis also suggested the individual didn’t eat much fish or other seafood, harboring nitrogen isotopes derived exclusively from terrestrial herbivores, contrasting with H. sapiens that migrated into southeast Asia about 45,000 years ago. Although the data only come from a single individual, they could hint that Denisovans had a less flexible dietary range than newcomers from our own species.
Another surprise from the new fossils is their age, says Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London who was one of the researchers to originally date the remains with uranium isotopes. In 2023, his team estimated the bones were about 160,000 years old. But the new radiocarbon dates suggest they’re much younger, only about 45,000 years old, making them “the youngest well-dated Denisovans so far,” Stringer says. The bones fill a long-standing gap in the Denisovan fossil record, he notes, landing them at a time and place when they likely would have interacted and possibly interbred with members of our species rapidly spreading across Asia.