How to Use Denisovan in a Sentence

Denisovan

noun
  • The genome represents a Denisovan man who lived in a small group 200,000 years ago in Denisova Cave.
    — Katie Hunt, CNN Money, 26 Dec. 2025
  • That has led to debate over whether the child belonged to Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, or even a hybrid with Denisovan ancestry.
    — Kaif Shaikh, Interesting Engineering, 28 Aug. 2025
  • The skull’s age and categorization as an early Denisovan ancestor would mean the group originated much earlier than thought.
    — Katie Hunt, CNN Money, 25 Sep. 2025
  • Evidence from the Denisovan genome also suggests that this was nothing new; the Denisovans had apparently interbred with an even earlier group.
    — ArsTechnica, 13 May 2026
  • Modern human populations in Southeast Asia have the highest Denisovan ancestry, suggesting the two groups once crossed paths there.
    — Katie Hunt, CNN Money, 14 May 2026
  • As a result, traces of Denisovan DNA live on in some humans today — something interbreeding geneticists call admixture.
    — Katie Hunt, CNN Money, 14 May 2026
  • Assuming the Dragon Man skull belonged to a typical Denisovan individual, scientists said the ancient human would have had pronounced brow ridges, large teeth and lacked our high foreheads.
    — Katie Hunt, CNN Money, 26 Dec. 2025
  • For example, a study published in August suggested that a Denisovan gene variant involved in the production of mucous and saliva may have helped Homo sapiens adapt to new environments.
    — Katie Hunt, CNN Money, 26 Dec. 2025
  • The Harbin individual yielded a similar number, and a few earlier studies had obtained data from individuals elsewhere, including a Denisovan from near Taiwan and an archaic human from Spain.
    — ArsTechnica, 13 May 2026
  • Stéphane Peyrégne, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and his colleagues have since analyzed the molar and from it recovered a Denisovan’s full genome — a highly detailed set of genetic information that can reveal past genetic diversity and evolution.
    — Katie Hunt, CNN Money, 26 Dec. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'Denisovan.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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