Denisova Cave, Russia: Microstratigraphy

Denisova Cave, situated in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia (51°23′51″ N, 84°40′36″ E), comprises a series of interconnected karstic chambers (Main, East, and South), formed in Silurian limestone (Reich et al. 2010; Douka et al. 2019; Jacobs et al. 2019). The site is famous for yielding fossils and ancient DNA that reveal the presence of two Pleistocene archaic human populations. The eponymous Denisovans were first identified through genome sequencing of a fossil finger bone found in the cave (Meyer et al. 2012). Neanderthal fossils have been recovered from various locations in the stratigraphic sequence. An exceptional find was a first-generation Neanderthal–Denisovan offspring that was identified through genome sequencing of an otherwise undiagnostic bone fragment (Slon et al. 2018). Ancient DNA has also been recovered from the sediments, both from field samples (Slon et al. 2017; Zavala et al. 2021) and from resin-soaked micromorphology samples (Massilani et al. 2022). Denisovans and Neanderthals used the site from the middle of the Middle Pleistocene, and a large number of artifacts in addition to faunal and plant remains have been recovered from the sediments that shine a light on the behavior and environmental context of the cave occupants (Derevianko et al. 2003). The sediments in the Main and East chambers (the areas of the cave that have been subject to much of the research focus to date) have yielded the earliest stone artifacts, recovered from sediments dated to ~300 ka BP (Jacobs et al. 2019).