John Hawks, however—a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who also did not participate in the research—sticks with just “Denisovans,” per the publication. Like Neanderthals, Denisovans interbred with our own species, so Hawks argues both are subcategories of humans. “I’m pretty confident saying these are all Homo sapiens,” he explains to the New York Times. But the skull, he says, is definitively a Denisovan based on this work.
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