Evidence item

To identify further hominin long bones, we morphologically screened more than 60,000 bone fragments from Bianfu Cave in Southwest China, of which 76 were selected for zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry and 17 for proteomic sequencing analysis. These analyses identified three hominin fossils, comprising two parietal bone fragments and one proximal radial fragment, from layers dated to approximately 167–134 thousand years ago. Subsequent proteomic analysis confirmed the taxonomic affiliation of these newly identified hominin bones, as well as that of two hominin teeth discovered during the excavation, as Denisovan.