Denisovans may have dwarfed other ancient humans

Two Denisovans who lived around 45,000 years ago were among the biggest humans of their time, with one, at a height of 190 centimetres, estimated to be around 20 centimetres taller than the average man today. The enigmatic Denisovans were a group of ancient humans who lived in Asia until around 30,000 years ago. They were first discovered in 2010, and only a few fossils have been found, giving us limited information about their biology and their lifestyles. Yousuke Kaifu at the University of Tokyo, Japan, and his colleagues analysed leg bones from two separate individuals, dredged by fishermen from the seafloor of Penghu Channel, west of Taiwan. Advertisement During the Pleistocene, from 2.58 million to 11,700 years ago, mainland Asia and the South-East Asian archipelago were home to multiple hominin species, including Homo sapiens, Homo erectus, Denisovans, Homo floresiensis and Homo luzonensis. The team was able to determine which hominin species the femur and tibia fossils came from by analysing proteins preserved in the bones. Known as Penghu 2 and 3, they are some of the largest Pleistocene Homo leg bones ever found, the researchers say. Kaifu and his colleagues, who declined to be interviewed for this story, say in their paper that Penghu 2 was probably male and would have weighed around 83 kilograms and been about 180 centimetres tall. Penghu 3, also likely a male, would have weighed 91 kilograms and been about 190 centimetres tall. This means Penghu 3, in particular, would have towered over his H. erectus relatives by up to 30 centimetres and been of a height and weight comparable to the largest Homo specimens from Africa and Europe. Adam Brumm at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, who wasn’t involved in the study, says the Taiwanese Denisovans were “big and imposing humans”. “Penghu 3 would have been roughly similar in height and weight to [football player] Erling Haaland – though hopefully with a better haircut,” says Brumm. In a separate study, released simultaneously, Kaifu’s team announced that the leg bones had been radiocarbon dated to between 45,000 and 43,000 years ago – later than most previously studied Denisovan fossils. Exactly when and where in the Penghu Channel the fossils were collected is unknown, but the two leg bones were part of a large collection donated in 2010 to the National Museum of Natural Science in Taiwan. In the same collection was a jawbone, also identified as Denisovan, but of a much less clear age. Analysing the carbon and nitrogen isotopes in fossil bones can reveal hints about animals’ diet and the environment in which they lived. This suggests that Penghu 3 lived in a savannah or grassland environment and consumed a high proportion of animal protein, similar to findings from some European Neanderthals. There were no signs that this individual consumed food from either marine or freshwater environments. While the Penghu leg bones generally resemble those of other archaic hominins, they also have some small anatomical features in common with Homo sapiens, including a prominent bony ridge, called a pilaster, on their thigh bones. This could indicate interbreeding with modern humans or an adaptation to their nomadic lifestyle, Kaifu and his colleagues suggest. Brumm says the Denisovans would have needed large and athletic bodies to hunt big game like elephants and other megaherbivores and would have been nomadic foragers who frequently travelled long distances on foot in search of game and wild plant foods. “If I were an early modern human moving through this part of the world and coming into conflict with their long-established hominin cousins, I think I’d much rather have come face to face with one of the tiny, so-called hobbits of Flores (H. floresiensis) than a Denisovan from Taiwan,” says Brumm. Other Denisovan fossils found further north also suggest a large body, says Chris Stringer at the Natural History Museum in London. “What’s interesting is that we might have expected a somewhat lighter build in the warmer conditions around Taiwan, even if from a glacial period,” he says. These fossils are “up there with the largest Neanderthal estimates for both weight and height”. Biorxiv DOI: 10.64898/2026.08.07.743438 Biorxiv DOI: 10.64898/2026.08.07.743455