Overview
- A University of Tokyo–led team analyzed a femur and a tibia recovered from the Penghu Channel and used preserved proteins and bone shape to attribute the fossils to the Denisovan lineage.
- The researchers reconstructed large body sizes from incomplete elements, estimating one individual near 5 ft 11 in and about 183 lb and the other over 6 ft 2 in and roughly 200 lb.
- The bones are reported from seabed finds that entered Taiwan’s National Museum of Natural Science collection and are dated by the authors to about 45,000–43,000 years ago.
- Authors highlight supporting chemical and morphological signals that hint at a meat-heavy diet and high mobility, but they stress that the study is a bioRxiv preprint and that genomic data and more fossils are needed to confirm behavioral or population-wide claims.
- Public commentary has linked the size estimates to biblical 'giants,' a claim the researchers do not support and that goes beyond what the current protein and morphological evidence can show.