It required decades of methodological development, computational innovation, and the sustained scientific vision of researchers who believed that the information locked in ancient bones was worth the immense effort required to extract it.

Denny’s genome was sequenced at high coverage — meaning each position in the genome was read many times over — which is essential for the kind of detailed ancestry analysis that revealed her extraordinary parentage.

The quality of the data was such that researchers could not only establish the broad pattern of 50-50 Neanderthal-Denisovan ancestry but could examine specific chromosomes, identify specific genetic variants, and trace which variants came from her maternal (Neanderthal) versus her paternal (Denisovan) ancestry.

The Meaning For Human Evolution