In the summer of 2008, in a cave nestled within Siberia’s Altai Mountains, Russian scientists unearthed a sliver of a finger bone. At first, the scientists assumed the fossil was from a Neanderthal — the cave was a known treasure trove of stone artifacts left behind by our heavy-browed ancestors. But it wasn’t until a genetic analysis performed in 2010 that the scientific community realized they were dealing with an altogether different species of prehistoric human: the Denisovans.
