Paleoproteins and dental-calculus ancient DNA identified the Middle Pleistocene Harbin cranium as an early Denisovan, solving the group's morphology puzzle—and it made Science's 2025 top breakthroughs list.
Paleoanthropologist John Hawks rounds up 2025's top ancient-DNA findings, including the ~200,000-year-old high-coverage Denisova 25 genome. This piece uses that list to review key breakthroughs.
Why can fragments of Denisovan DNA act as a tracer of human movement? This plain-language guide explains how archaic admixture shaped the genetic makeup of people in East Asia today.
A Max Planck team scanning over a hundred ancient Eurasian genomes finds Denisovan ancestry thinned over time, while the lineage leading to Japan's Jomon carried almost none—pointing to distinct early dispersal routes.
CT reconstruction of the roughly one-million-year-old Yunxian cranium places it in the early Homo longi, Denisovan-related branch and may push the origin of our own lineage back beyond a million years.
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