We now have a Denisovan skull. (Welcome to the Bagestan where we bring you HBDChick's tweets yesterday, TODAY.) NB: the Cro-Denisova proper was open for business, as it were, for a long time. By "Denisovan" they mean the seven fragments 2, 3, 4, 8, 19, 20, and 21; the others being Neanders, human, or simply unsequenced - or D. 11.
This paper concerns mitochondria - the mothers. That is why this paper includes Neander hybrid D. 3 but not the dramatic Vindija-mother hybrid D. 11, "Denny": D. 3's mother was Denisovan, where D. 11's mother was not. D. 11's currently-absent father, whom I shall name 11p and whose mtDNA we lack, clustered with the D. 3+4 cousins (pdf). D. 11p was, like D. 3, himself partly Neander. Both Neander influx came further back in their trees.
This newlysequenced skull isn't from Denisova - it is from Manchuria: the Dragon Man "longi", dateable 144kBC. The news here is that the DNA is now sequenced and shown to be Denisovan.
The full paper is on Cell. Specifically the Harbin skull aligns with the common ancestor of D. 2 and the other five. Those 3+4[+11p] cousins must have broken off before 185kBC, although their lineage lasted until the Asian dawn of homo sapiens sapiens; 3+4+11p are presumably the elder, truest Denisovans.
Incidentally without the full genome for Dragon Man, we cannot say if it (can we know "he" or "she"?) had Neander influx as did D. 3 and 11p. But I suspect... it did not. The Neanders came later and Harbin is further east.
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