Remains of three Denisovans and one Neanderthal are uncovered in a Siberian cave - Daily Mail

Remains of three Denisovans and one Neanderthal dating back 200,000 years have been uncovered in a Siberian cave, experts reveal.

Neanderthals were a close human ancestor that lived in Europe and Western Asia from about 400,000 to 40,000 years ago.

Less is known about the Denisovans, another population of early humans who lived in Asia at least 80,000 years ago and were distantly related to Neanderthals.

Dating to 200,000 years ago, the new Denisovan bones are some of the oldest human fossils to have ever been genetically sequenced. .

The fact that the remains of both Neanderthals and Denisovans were found together raises questions about whether the two archaic human types lived there.  ?

Neanderthals were very early (archaic) humans who lived in Europe and Western Asia from about 400,000 years ago until they became extinct about 40,000 years ago. .

Denisovans are another population of early humans who lived in Asia and were distantly related to Neanderthals.

Denisova Cave rose to fame 11 years ago, when genetic sequencing of a fossilised finger bone revealed a new, previously unknown human group – named 'Denisovans', in honour of the site.

But identifying further Denisovan remains at the cave has been challenging, as any human remains are fragmented and difficult to spot amongst hundreds of thousands of animal bones also present. .

The team focused on Denisova Cave's oldest layers, which date to as early as 200,000 years ago. 

Denisova Cave remains the only site so far discovered which contains evidence for the periodic presence of all three major hominin groups, Denisovans, Neanderthals and modern humans, in the last 200,000 years.              

Earlier this year, scientists reported that DNA discovered in Denisova Cave suggests early modern humans lived alongside Denisovans and Neanderthals at least 44,000 years ago. 

Although remains of these mysterious early humans have mostly been discovered at the Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains in Siberia, DNA analysis has shown the ancient people were widespread across Asia. 

The two species appear to have separated from a common ancestor around 200,000 years ago, while they split from the modern human Homo sapien lineage around 600,000 years ago

Professor Chris Stringer, an anthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London, said: 'Layer 11 in the cave contained a Denisovan girl's fingerbone near the bottom but worked bone and ivory artefacts higher up, suggesting that the Denisovans could have made the kind of tools normally associated with modern humans

'However, direct dating work by the Oxford Radiocarbon Unit reported at the ESHE meeting suggests the Denisovan fossil is more than 50,000 years old, while the oldest 'advanced' artefacts are about 45,000 years old, a date which matches the appearance of modern humans elsewhere in Siberia.'

Now, researchers have found two distinct modern human genomes - one from Oceania and another from East Asia - both have distinct Denisovan ancestry