The comparison in the new genomes showed that Denisovans and Neanderthals were more closely related to each other than either was to any living human. But the real kicker came with the revelation that Denisovan DNA was alive and well in contemporary Melanesians—the indigenous people of Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and a scattering of islands off the northeast coast of Australia. Just as the Neanderthals left their permanent mark in me and you if you are of Eurasian descent, these other people, known only from this single bone, imprinted their genetic mark through the ages in the ancestors of these
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