![A combo photo of the unearthed mandible(top right) and the virtual reconstruction of the Xiahe mandible (left and bottom right). [Photo: China Plus]](http://img1.zhytuku.meldingcloud.com/images/zhycms_chinaplus/20190502/bacfeca7-a5e4-4030-bcbb-26a94568676c.jpg?x-oss-process=image/resize,w_650)
A 160,000-year-old mandible fossil may indicate that Denisovans, an ancient hominin group, adapted to living on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau long before modern humans even arrived in the region, according to a study published online on Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Back in 2008, Denisovan was first discovered based on a few bone fragments and teeth that came from the Denisova cave in Siberia. They are members of a hominin group who are currently only known directly from fragmentary fossils.
A team led by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou University and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA), used ancient protein analysis to study the fossil, which is a hominin lower mandible that was found in a cave in Xiahe in China.
This new finding helps to trace the appearance of Denisovan back to 160,000 years ago.
The recovered proteins led scientists to conclude it came from a Denisovan, a relative of Neanderthals.
Chinese scientist Zhang Dongju of Lanzhou University in China says these archaic humans “successfully adapted to high-altitude, low-oxygen environments long before the regional arrival of modern Homo sapiens.”
The new work was a research of nearly four decades. The fossil was first found by a monk who went to pray in a cave in 1980. Later he gave it to a Buddhist leader, who passed it along to Lanzhou University in China. The study of it did not begin until 2010.
