Is the "million-year-old" skull from China a Denisovan or something else?

"A fossil skull from China that made headlines last week may or may not be a million years old, but it's probably closely related to Denisovans. The fossil skull, dubbed Yunxian 2, is one of three unearthed from a terrace alongside the Han River, in central China, in a layer of river sediment somewhere between 600,000 and 1 million years old."

"In the end, Feng and his colleagues found themselves looking at a familiar face; Yunxian 2 bears a striking resemblance to a 146,000-year-old Denisovan skull. That skull, from Harbin in northeast China, made headlines in 2021 when a team of paleoanthropologists claimed it was part of an entirely new species, which they dubbed Homo longi. According to that first study, Homo longi was a distinct hominin species, separate from us, Neanderthals, and even Denisovans."

A cracked fossil skull from central China, Yunxian 2, was digitally reconstructed from CT scans and dates to between 600,000 and 1 million years old. Yunxian 2 was found alongside two other skulls in river sediment by the Han River and was initially identified as Homo erectus. The reconstruction shows a striking resemblance to a 146,000-year-old Denisovan skull from Harbin. That Harbin fossil was previously proposed as a new species named Homo longi, argued to be distinct from Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, and Denisovans. The identity of Yunxian 2 could support links between Homo longi and Denisovans, pending analysis of a third unpublished skull.

Read at Ars Technica