But Denny is there, in her storage facility in Leipzig, as the proof of principle: that first-generation hybrids existed, that they can be found, and that their genomes can tell us things about the ancient human world that no other evidence can.

The Moment Of Recognition

There is a moment in the scientific process — a moment that is not usually described in published papers, which tend toward careful technical language and restrained claims — when a researcher looks at data and understands that something extraordinary has been found.

For the researchers working on Denisova 11, that moment came when the initial ancestry analysis revealed the 50-50 split — when the data showed, unmistakably, that half of Denny’s genome was Neanderthal and half was Denisovan.

The first response to such a result, in any rigorous scientific process, is skepticism.