Artist depiction of the heavy set facial features of a Denisovan. Credit: Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology/Chinese Academy of Sciences

A low, sloping forehead, a massive brow ridge that curves backwards, rectangle-like eye sockets, flat cheeks, and a moderately elevated bridge of the nose. Taken together, these features are the hallmarks of the ancient humans called the Denisovans , say researchers who studied a trove of fossilized skull fragments, teeth and jaws found in northern China.

“We are finally starting to put a face to the Denisovan,” says Sally Wasef, a palaeogeneticist at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.

Denisovans were first described in 2010, after researchers sequenced genetic material from a mysterious finger bone discovered in a cave in Siberia and found that it did not resemble that of Homo sapiens or Neanderthals.…