The Baishiya Karst Cave will not be a straightforward place to name house. It’s nestled on a steep rocky slope on the Tibetan Plateau, 10,700 toes up, the place the oxygen is skinny and the local weather chilly and dry.

However a sequence of expeditions to the cave lately have demonstrated that it was house to one of the mysterious branches of humanity: a Neanderthal-like group of individuals referred to as the Denisovans.

Since 2010, scientists have painted a murky image of Denisovans (pronounced De-NEE-so-vans) primarily based on simply three tooth, a number of bone fragments and traces of DNA. Thriller has shrouded a lot of their existence, particularly their conduct.

However researchers who’ve dug a number of small holes into the Baishyia Karst Cave have uncovered a wealth of clues about Denisovans. In a paper printed Wednesday, they reported that for greater than 100,000 years, Denisovans hunted or scavenged a variety of animals on the Tibetan plateau, from blue sheep to snow leopards and even golden eagles. Denisovans not solely ate the animals, however most likely skinned their hides for clothes to remain heat in freezing temperatures.

The primary proof of Denisovans turned up some 1,400 miles northwest of that spot, within the Denisova Collapse Siberia. DNA from a single tooth and a pinkie bone confirmed that the group belonged to a lineage distinct from trendy people and Neanderthals.

Thousands and thousands of dwelling folks carry some Denisovan genes, geneticists later found, indicating that trendy people interbred with them, together with Neanderthals, earlier than the 2 teams disappeared.

The Tibetan cave had been a Buddhist sanctuary for hundreds of years. In 1980, a monk who got here there to hope observed part of a jaw on the bottom. The specimen languished in a museum drawer for years till Dongju Zhang, an archaeologist at Lanzhou College, gave it a better look.

The jaw appeared human however lacked some key options, like a distinguished chin. And the 2 molars nonetheless rooted to the bone have been bigger than human tooth. Dr. Zhang suspected it is perhaps Denisovan. So she and her colleagues searched the Tibetan jaw for DNA, with out success. They’d higher luck once they appeared for collagen proteins.

The scientists then in contrast the construction of the proteins to the collagen genes of recent people, Neanderthals and Denisovans. The perfect match was the Denisovan gene.

In 2016, Dr. Zhang started main expeditions to the cave to study extra. On newer visits, her staff dug a pair of holes six toes down into the cave ground.

The expeditions revealed that the jaw will need to have been over 160,000 years outdated. The sediment additionally yielded 4 fragments of Denisovan DNA. The oldest got here from a layer that shaped roughly 100,000 years in the past, and the youngest from a layer that shaped between 48,000 and 32,000 years in the past.

If that have been true, it might elevate the tantalizing chance that trendy people and Denisovans had contact on the Tibetan plateau. Archaeologists have discovered stone blades elsewhere on the plateau which can be a minimum of 30,000 years outdated and distinctive to trendy people.

As Dr. Zhang and her colleagues dug deeper, the researchers additionally discovered 1000’s of bone fragments within the holes. However they’d no thought what species the battered items belonged to.

The researchers floor up the samples and located sufficient collagen to determine 2,005 bones.

One in every of them, a rib fragment, contained collagen from a Denisovan. The rib got here from the identical layer of sediment that yielded the latest Denisovan DNA.

Samantha Brown, an anthropological scientist on the College of Tübingen in Germany who was not concerned within the examine, stated that discovering each the DNA and rib in the identical layer strongly supported the existence of Denisovans at such a latest time in Tibet.

“That is such an thrilling discovery,” she stated. “With out these a number of traces of proof, it might need felt too good to be true.”

However Tom Higham, an archaeological scientist on the College of Vienna, stated that it was unlucky that Dr. Zhang’s staff had not been capable of finding any DNA within the rib, nor did they discover carbon that they may use to exactly decide its age. “To me, it’s a appreciable letdown,” he stated.

Dr. Zhang and her colleagues concluded that the two,004 different bones principally belonged to animals that Denisovans introduced into the cave. A lot of them present reduce marks indicating they have been butchered.

The Denisovans seem to have favored blue sheep, a species that also lives at this time on the Tibetan plateau. However Denisovans additionally hunted or scavenged carnivores and birds of prey. They have been additionally not above killing marmots, cat-size rodents that hibernate in winter.

Frido Welker, a molecular anthropologist on the College of Copenhagen and one among Dr. Zhang’s analysis companions, stated that the proof on the Baishiya Karst Cave pointed to the Denisovans adapting efficiently to the Tibetan Plateau even via the Ice Age.

“Denisovans weren’t there unintentionally on a random day,” he stated. “They managed to stay it on the market for a for much longer time, which says one thing about their resilience.”