Mysterious human bones dredged from the seafloor between Taiwan and the Penghu Islands several years ago are providing new insights into the appearance—and the large size—of one of the last ancient human relatives to share the planet with us.
According to new research, the fossils may be a femur and tibia that once belonged to Denisovans, an enigmatic species of hominin that may have still lived alongside modern humans at least as recently as 30,000 years ago in some parts of the world.
Known as the Penghu 2 and Penghu 3 fossils, the specimens were recovered in 2010 by fishermen in the Penghu Channel and are believed to be approximately 45,000 years old. While recognized as hominin remains since around the time of their discovery, the new research identifies Denisovans as the likeliest candidates for the fossils.
Not only that, but the identification of the fossils as Denisovan also suggests that these most captivating ancient human relatives may have been larger than expected, potentially dwarfing anatomically modern humans who lived at that time, as well as the Neanderthals, which are believed to have also gone extinct by around 40,000 years ago.
A 45,000-Year-Old Discovery Surfaces
The Penghu fossils have remained a point of debate among anthropologists since their discovery in 2010. One of the reasons for this involves the difficulty in conclusively identifying ancient remains like these when genetic material is absent, which is often the case when it comes to ancient fossils.
However, a breakthrough occurred in 2025, when scientists successfully used protein analysis to determine that a mandible retrieved with the fossils at the time of their discovery, known as Penghu 1, belonged to a male Denisovan.
Now, additional protein analysis of the other Penghu fossil specimen appears to indicate that they also belonged to Denisovans—a discovery that, if confirmed, could significantly expand the presently very limited fossil record of these mysterious extinct humans.
However, the size and appearance of the Penghu fossils also reveal another unique surprise: that the Denisovans may have been surprisingly tall compared to other hominins that shared their ancient world with them.
Were Some of Humanity’s Mysterious Relatives Giants?
Denisovans were first formally identified just five years before the Penghu discoveries, when in 2010, scientists successfully retrieved DNA from a tiny portion of a finger bone discovered in Denisova Cave in Siberia. Based on the genetic evidence, these archaic humans thrived in parts of Asia for many hundreds of thousands of years, and even interbred with modern humans, much like our other ancient cousins, the Neanderthals.
Because of this, remnants of Denisovans persist to this day in traces found in the DNA of modern human populations. Yet despite the amount of information about them that anthropologists have recovered, the Denisovans have long remained elusive in the fossil record, offering scientists very little information about their size and overall appearance.
The few remains that have been uncovered—consisting mainly of teeth and fragmentary bones, including the fingerbone that was destroyed to obtain and sequence the Denisovan genome—provide very little context for the appearance of these mysterious ancient human relatives. This has led to significant debate about not just how Denisovans might have looked, but also how their anatomy differed from ours, and what their exact geographic distribution might have been.
Mystery of the Penghu Fossils Unravels
Further complicating the Denisovan story is the fact that the story of the Penghu fossils themselves, and how they came to the attention of scientists in the first place, also remains incomplete.
After their initial recovery from the Penghu Channel, the Penghu specimens were donated by local artist Li-Ren Hou to Taiwan’s National Museum of Natural Science. Beyond this, researchers have no precise record of where or when the individual specimens were dredged from the seafloor, and therefore have no additional clues about the exact conditions under which the fossils were preserved.
Despite such hurdles, modern proteomic techniques have helped researchers to produce a likely confirmation that the Penghu specimens were indeed Denisovan, having belonged to a pair of male members of the species who lived around 45,000 years ago.
Along with that discovery, the new identification also suggests that Penghu 2 may have stood approximately 180 centimeters, or about 5 feet 11 inches tall, and weighed roughly 83 kilograms, or 182 pounds.
Penghu 3, by comparison, may have been even larger, clocking in at around 190 centimeters (close to 6 feet 3 inches tall) and weighing nearly 200 pounds.
Although there are plenty of modern humans that reach—or even exceed—such heights, Penghu 3’s suspected size still places it at the upper ranges of common male human height in modern times, with the average American man standing at about 5 feet 9 inches, and roughly 95% of the male population attaining maximum heights that fall below 6 feet 3 inches.
More significantly, however, is that in the Pleistocene world of 45,000 years ago, a height of 6 feet 3 inches would have been quite large, especially when compared to size estimates for Homo sapiens, Homo erectus, and Neanderthals from that era based on fossil remains.
“Our findings demonstrate that the Denisovan population at the northern circle had [a] larger body size than earlier Homo erectus as well as Late Pleistocene Homo sapiens in eastern Asia,” the study’s authors write.
“This challenges the generally held expectation that Pleistocene Homo followed Bergmann’s rule that anticipates latitudinal decline of body size, and suggests that the large Denisovan brain resulted from their large body size at least partly,” the study’s authors add.
New Discoveries, and Lingering Questions
Right now, the estimated 45,000-year age of the fossils places them relatively late in Denisovan history; a time when modern humans were spreading through regions where, today, genetic evidence reveals that the two populations encountered long ago and interbred.
Additional studies will also be required before a firm conclusion about the Penghu remains can be made. Still, if confirmed, the fossils could help anthropologists fill a significant gap in our understanding of what later Denisovans looked like, and where they lived—particularly across coastal China and Southeast Asia.
The new study, “Denisovan leg bones from Taiwan reveal large body size,” which has not yet undergone peer review, appeared on the preprint server BioRxiv.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.