Deep in the forests of Laos, in a cave in the Annamite Mountains, lay a single child's tooth. That tooth – an unassuming molar - could be from a mysterious species of human we know little about, and of which few remains are known to exist.
Because the molar only recently completed development , and showed no signs of being worn, the team believes that the tooth is from a child between 3.5 to 8.5 years old when they died. Using sediment from around the tooth, they dated the tooth to between 164 to 131 thousand years old.
Unfortunately, when it comes to ancient single teeth, it's not easy to confirm that it's definitely Denisovans. The team wasn't able to sample for ancient DNA due to the age of the specimen, in part because of the tropical conditions that likely destroyed any trace of DNA many thousands of years ago.
But by analyzing proteins in the tooth alongside its morphology, the team are pretty sure it's Denisovan, although it could also be from a Neanderthal. We'll need more analysis to confirm one way or the other. "The differences from Neanderthals that we observe do not preclude [the tooth] TNH2-1 from belonging to this taxon and would make it the south-eastern-most Neanderthal fossil ever discovered,"
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