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# Chinese scientists use proteins to identify fossil bones from Xujiayao as Denisovan
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/kitaiskie-uchionye-vyiasnili-chto-iskopaemye-kosti-iz-mestonakhozhdeniia-siuitsziaiao-na-severe-kitaia-prinadlezhali-denisovtsam/
- Published: 2026-10-25T11:55:05.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-25T12:10:15.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: The East, Archaeology, Science

Chinese scientists have established that fossil bones from the Xujiayao site in northern China belonged to Denisovans. The work was carried out by a team led by Fu Qiaomei of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

The Denisovans interbred with the ancestors of modern humans, and the inhabitants of Oceania and parts of Asia still carry their DNA. Very few Denisovan bones are known, so they were understood mainly from genetic data. In 2025, scientists used proteins and mitochondrial DNA to assign to the Denisovans a skull from Harbin in north-eastern China.

In 1976-1979, 20 fossil human bones and teeth, between 199,000 and 138,000 years old, were found at Xujiayao. Scientists assigned them to various groups of ancient humans, and recently made the Xujiayao 6 skull the holotype, that is, the reference specimen, of a separate species, Homo juluensis.

No DNA has survived in these bones, so the researchers studied proteins, which persist in bone for longer. They took a little bone powder from the right parietal bone and from a fragment of the lower jaw, and identified the proteins with a mass spectrometer.

The decisive feature was position 996 in the collagen protein COL1A2\. In all the Denisovans studied, this spot is occupied by the amino acid lysine, whereas in Neanderthals and modern humans it is occupied by arginine. In the parietal bone, lysine was found in 57 protein fragments and arginine in only one. In the jaw, the ratio was 61 to one.

Comparing the Xujiayao bones with the Harbin skull, the authors described the general features of the Denisovans. The braincase was low and broad, and its walls were very thick: at the crown the thickness of the vault reaches 7.7 mm, and at the parietal eminence 12 mm. The side walls of the skull are almost parallel, the brow ridge is massive, the cheekbones are flat, and prognathism, that is, the forward projection of the jaws, is only slightly pronounced. The rounded occiput and the occipital bun characteristic of Neanderthals are absent in the Denisovans.

The authors consider that Homo juluensis need not be singled out as a separate species. That species was proposed largely because of the brain volume of Xujiayao 6, about 1,700 ml, but in modern humans brain volume ranges from roughly 1,090 to 1,880 ml. On the strength of similar anatomy, the authors also assign to the Denisovans the skulls from Dali, Jinniushan and Hualongdong in China.

Proteins were obtained from only two bones out of twenty, and the conclusion rests on a single amino acid. The proteins do not show how the people of Xujiayao were related to the Denisovans of Siberia, Tibet, Taiwan and Harbin. The skulls from Dali, Jinniushan and Hualongdong are linked to the Denisovans only by anatomy, and the facial features in the reconstruction are taken mainly from the Harbin skull