Famous Siberian cave yields remains of yak-like Ice Age mamma

A Siberian cave already famous for yielding the first remains of an extinct human lineage called the Denisovans, who once roamed widely in Eurasia, has now produced evidence of a previously unknown large Ice Age mammal closely related to today's yak.



Researchers said they discovered small bone fragments of the animal in Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia in Russia, and obtained DNA that showed these remains belonged to a bovine species distinct from others already known, living and extinct.



In all, the researchers studied 20 bone fragments from this species — 14 from Denisova Cave and 6 from other sites in the broader region.



The oldest specimen dated to about 250,000 to 200,000 years ago, and the youngest to about 27,000 years ago.



The bones themselves were so fragmentary that their shape alone did not reveal that they belonged to a previously unknown large mammal.



But the researchers were able to generate 20 ancient genomes from the bones, and these showed that this was a unique species whose evolutionary lineage diverged from the ancestors of the modern-day yak approximately 400,000 years ago.