Also, speaking of my special interests, it’s been a whole year and I’m still not over the discovery that the Homo Longi skull is a Dennisovan!
I’ve been waiting for them to find a Dennisovan for YEARS.
Ya’ll don’t understand!!! It’s a whole species of human!! Very much like the Neanderthals!! And the more we learn about Neanderthals the more we learn that they were very very much like us, and not very much at all like the cavemen you see in movies. Dennisovans, being a close sister species to Neanderthals, probably were also very very much like us. So much like us, in fact, that our Great (x100) Grandparents met and had kids with them!! For some of you a Dennisovan IS one of your Great (x100) Grandparents!!
Once upon a time we knew them! We raised families with them!
And then for 40,000 years we lost their faces. We forgot they ever existed. Until we found a tiny bone in 2008, and got a little bit of DNA from it, and realized there was a whole species of person missing from our family, and that many modern populations still carry their DNA today. Then for 17 years they existed in this limbo: we knew they existed, we knew that we once knew them, and we knew they were probably very much like us. But all we really had was DNA from fragments of bone. We never had a skeleton. We couldn’t see their face.
And then we found it. The face of our long lost family member. And now that we have a type specimen we can find more of them, and learn more about them, and finally get to know them again!!
*Grabs you by the shoulders and shakes you.* I need you to understand how cool this is!