Researchers had long suspected that these two groups of ancient human relatives interbred, finding whiffs of both their genes in ancient and modern human genomes. But no one had ever found the direct offspring from such a pairing.
The Denisovans were a sister group of the Neanderthals, splitting from a common ancestor some 390,000 years ago. They likely lived until around 40,000 years ago, around the time when Neanderthals were also starting to fade away.
Today, around two percent of DNA from most Europeans and Asians is Neanderthal. Hints of Denisovan also remain. Four to six percent of modern Melanesian genomes come from this ancient hominin.
This individual was a first generation interspecies hybrid. The odds of finding a half-and-half humanoid remain were vanishingly small, but it happened.
Polar bears mate with grizzly bears, why wouldn't relatively similar hominids mate? Obviously, they would and did, possibly often.
