Discover the latest findings of archaeologists who may have uncovered a Denisovan skull in Australia. Learn about the potential implications for our understanding of human evolution in this fascinating video. Given the fact that recent DNA studies show that Papuan Highlanders interbred with a Denisovan-related group, possibly as recently as 15,000 years ago, we should be looking for skulls with so-called archaic-looking features in Papua and Australia. However, this archaic population is deeply divergent from the northern Denisovans population from Siberia and China. Scientists identified another Denisovan population which lived in southeast Asia, that diverged around 363,000 years ago from the Siberian group. The Denisovan lineage found in Australia and New Guinea split off from the northern Denisovans around 283,000 years ago, suggesting they arrived in Australia-New Guinean around 300,000 years. This would have given them ample time to spread throughout the landmass known as Sahul, which is the connected lands of New Guinea, Australian and Tasmania during ice age sea levels. This also means that this so-called Denisovan lineage is as different from northern Denisovans as Neanderthals are from Homo sapiens, therefore the northern Denisovan skulls, such as from China, are not a good indicator of the skull morphology of this population. Until the Denisova genome was found, many paleoanthropologists assumed that South and East Asian populations of the early Late Pleistocene were relict populations of Homo erectus, representing a relatively static population history from the initial human habitation of Asia. The Denisova genome appears inconsistent with that static model, according to a recent study titled ‘How Australia Informs the Worldwide Pattern of Pleistocene Human Evolution’. SOURCES: 'WLH 50: How Australia Informs the Worldwide Pattern of Pleistocene Human Evolution' https://paleoanthro.org/media/journal/content/PA20140505.pdf 'Multiple Deeply Divergent Denisovan Ancestries in Papuans' https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0092-8674%2819%2930218-1