A question that the discovery of Denny inevitably raises is: was she a rare exception, or was she representative of a broader phenomenon of Neanderthal-Denisovan interbreeding?

The honest answer is that we don’t know, and we may never know with precision.

From one perspective, the existence of Denny suggests that such hybridization was possible — and if possible, it may have occurred more often than we know.

The sample of ancient individuals that scientists have been able to sequence is tiny compared to the populations that actually existed.

Denny was found because a small bone fragment was recovered, subjected to protein analysis that identified it as hominin, and then subjected to ancient DNA analysis that happened to succeed and happened to produce an extraordinary result.