The bone contains the story of a child.

The child was born approximately 90,000 years ago in the Altai Mountains of Siberia, at the crossroads of the worlds occupied by two distinct ancient human groups.

Her mother was a Neanderthal — a member of the species that had occupied Eurasia for hundreds of thousands of years, whose lineage would end approximately 40,000 years ago when the last Neanderthal populations died out.

Her father was a Denisovan — a member of a group that had lived across Asia for a similarly vast period, whose lineage would also eventually end, at an unknown date, in an unknown place, for reasons we may never fully understand.