An article published in Science on August 12, 2026, by Brown (Denisovans towered over their contemporaries and munched a bunch of meat) caught my eye. In it, Taylor Brown mentions two papers published in bioRxiv, one of which describes leg bones dredged up from the seabed between the Island of Taiwan and mainland China. The protein in the bones showed they were Denisovans, but they were also big. The article quotes an archaeologist (University of Washington), called Ben Marwick who said that "They were very tall! Previously we knew that Denisovans had big brains from the skull and teeth finds, and now we know they had big bodies also." But, how big?
The paper in question is the following: Denisovan leg bones from Taiwan reveal large body size, Yousuke Kaifu, Chun-Hsiang Chang, Yumeko Tarusawa, Rikai Sawafuji, Shiori Yonemoto, Shigeru Shimamura, Masanaru Takai, Reiko T. Kono, Cheng-Han Sun, Cheng-Hsiu Tsai, Minoru Yoneda, Takumi Tsutaya, bioRxiv 2026.08.07.743438; doi: https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.08.07.743438.
The specimens are known as Penghu 2 and Penghu 3, different people, about 43,000 to 45,000 years old. The paper notes that they are similar to the Neanderthals, and different to Africans and also to the other hominins found in East Asia: "Among the premodern Homo groups, an anteroposteriorly thickened (non-platymeric) proximal shaft characterizes Neanderthals and in particular Middle Pleistocene European Homo, as compared to African Early-Middle Pleistocene Homo (Fig. 4b). Penghu 2 is similar to the Middle Pleistocene European Homo in this respect. Such a trend is not evident in the available small sample of H. erectus and Middle Pleistocene Homo from eastern Asia... Penghu 3 exhibits a strong tibial posterior pilaster, a shared feature of European Middle Pleistocene Homo and Neanderthals, as well as some Upper Palaeolithic modern humans"
This seems reasonable, Denisovans are a sister clade to modern humans and Neanderthals. We appeared later than Homo erectus, and should therefore share similar features.
The two specimens, who may have been male, were tall and big: Penghu 2 was 1.8 m tall and weighed 83 kg (5.9 ft. - 183 lbs ) and Penghu 3 was 1.9 m tall and 91 kg (6.23 ft - 201 lbs), similar to the largest known European or African hominins from that period, but much taller and massive than the Asian erectus.
The authors suggest that "large-bodied Denisovan individuals inhabited both northern and southern regions of Asian mainland, and large brain sizes seen in some Denisovan individuals (Harbin 1, and possibly other specimens such as Xujiayao 6 and Xuchang 1) was at least partly a consequence of their large body sizes, as has been suggested for Neanderthals."
Comments
This study is very interesting. First of all, we have a random sample of two specimens, out of a Denisovan population, and both are very, very tall, even by modern standards. Could they have inspired tales of giants among shorter hominins that lived in the same region? Did they move on, into America and settle there, giving birth to myths among the later arrivals (modern humans) like the Si-Te-Cah, a race of red-haired giants mentioned by the Northern Paiute people in Nevada, U.S? (see my posts about them)
Large body sizes are efficient when living in a cold environment (the paper mentions this), so they were well equipped to deal with the icy conditions that they would have come across on their journey north, into Eastern Siberia and Beringia.
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