A new Science study places the Yunxian cranium from China close to Homo longi and the Denisovans using hundreds of 3D cranial landmarks across 179 Homo fossils. This suggests Denisovans—a lineage known mostly from DNA—may align morphologically with recently described East Asian fossils, tightening the map of human evolution in Eurasia.
— It updates a core public narrative about human origins by giving a tangible fossil anchor to Denisovans rather than treating them as a DNA‑only ghost lineage.
Devin Reese
2025.12.03
60% relevant
Both pieces report high‑impact paleontological finds that materially revise our view of ancient life; like the Yunxian skull anchoring Denisovan morphology, the Carreras Pampa track assemblage (Raúl Esperante et al., PLOS One) is a dataset that can reshape public and scientific narratives about behavior and ecology in deep time.
Jake Currie
2025.12.03
42% relevant
Both pieces use newly decoded genomic or genomic‑anchored evidence to change how we map evolutionary relationships and to attach concrete biological data to longstanding paleontological/morphological questions; the vampire‑squid genome functions for cephalopods much like the Yunxian ancient‑DNA work did for hominin lineages.
Razib Khan
2025.11.29
90% relevant
The episode directly discusses the new Yuxian/Yunxian fossil material from China and how that evidence provides a morphological anchor for Denisovan‑related lineages, matching the existing claim that recent East Asian fossils give a tangible face to a previously DNA‑only Denisovan lineage.
Razib Khan
2025.10.07
100% relevant
The paper “The phylogenetic position of the Yunxian cranium elucidates the origin of Homo longi and the Denisovans” (Ni/Stringer group) analyzed Procrustes‑aligned landmark data to place Yunxian near H. longi/Denisovans.