An analysis of ancient proteins preserved within the fossil, published today in Science, pegs the jawbone as belonging to a Denisovan, a close cousin of Neanderthals that lived from roughly 400,000 years to 30,000 years ago.

Previous confirmed fossils of the enigmatic hominin were found only in the cold, high-altitude climes of Siberia and the Tibetan Plateau. But Penghu 1, as the jawbone is known, shows Denisovans were also at home in humid lowland tropics,