DENIsovan anCESTORs in Sahul: deciphering human evolution through molecular techniques
This Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellowship explores human evolution in Sahul. Modern humans dispersed out of Africa and reached most corners of Eurasia between 100-40ka, occupying diverse environments from the forests of western Europe to the steppes of northern Asia and to the rainforests of southern Asia. It is during this period that they met and occasionally interbred with several indigenous archaic hominin groups living in these regions. These include Neanderthals and Denisovans, for which we now have strong genetic evidence of close interactions and repeated interbreeding events.
The history and dispersal of hominins in Island Southeast Asia (ISEA), the focus of this project, reveals a unique fossil record during the Pleistocene that includes Homo erectus, H. floresiensis, and H. luzonensis. Genetic evidence also suggests that multiple Denisovan populations were living in ISEA, however, a dearth of human fossils in general, and a complete lack of fossil evidence for Denisovans, in ISEA and Sahul, leaves a range of important questions, such as anatomy, culture, and behaviour, unanswered.
The aim of this project is to rectify this situation by identifying new human fossils from Papua New Guinea and to provide detailed taxonomic, chronological, isotopic, and ancestral information on these remains. DENI-CESTOR examines the paleontological record of Papua New Guinea (PNG), a severely understudied but geographically relevant region for understanding hominin dispersal in Sahul. This project is the first of its kind using ZooMS (collagen peptide mass fingerprinting) to search for hominin fossils in tropical island environments of ISEA and will form a framework for future scientific studies in the region. It also combines zooarchaeological and dietary data to explore changing subsistence practices in the New Guinea Highlands from the Late Pleistocene, the early-mid Holocene, through to the early Lapita period.
