Login / Register

雅思阅读-070-what-did-denisovans-look-like改编自-scientific-american-带音频

ielts 👁 2 · 💬 0 · 📅 2026-09-14
📌 雅思
← Blog 📡 RSS
A

雅思阅读 070 — What Did the Mysterious Denisovans Look Like?

改编自 Scientific American（2026-09，Tom Metcalfe）。研究发表于 Nature。

🎧 课文朗读音频（约 1 分半）

Reading Passage

The Denisovans are considered one of modern humans' closest ancient ancestors, yet we know very little about how they looked or lived. But new analyses of remains from Bianfu Cave in Yunnan province, south-western China, reveal clues to not only how these ancient hominins looked but also how they survived and thrived at the site more than 130,000 years ago.

The findings could help place other ancient hominin remains as Denisovans — helping to colour in more of their shadowy history.

"People recognised that maybe other archaic hominins were also Denisovan, but we needed more evidence," says archaeologist Hao Li of China's Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research. Until now, the only solid evidence of Denisovan life was confined to just two places: Siberia's Denisova Cave, where the species was discovered in 2008, and China's Baishiya Karst Cave on the north-eastern Tibetan Plateau. The analyses by Li and his colleagues show Bianfu Cave is among the richest Denisovan sites known to exist.

Li is a co-author of one of two studies published in Nature describing the remains and artefacts. The bones were unearthed in 2019, but have only recently been identified as Denisovan, thanks to a distinctive amino acid found in tooth enamel. Identifying the samples using ancient DNA analysis was not an option, says geneticist Qiaomei Fu of China's Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology. The cave is very old and relatively warm: "These conditions were unsuitable for DNA preservation."

The newly described Denisovan remains include four teeth, part of an arm bone, and two skull fragments. Roughly 60,000 animal bone fragments were also recovered from the cave, which indicate these Denisovans mainly hunted deer and wild bovids, including water buffalo and gaur.

One skull fragment is between 167,000 and 161,000 years old, while the other skull fragment, arm bone and teeth are between 142,000 and 134,000 years old. The arm bone analysis is especially interesting: it suggests Denisovan bones were shaped more like those of modern humans than robust Neanderthals, which implies Denisovans may have looked more like modern humans than Neanderthals, too.

Genetic studies show Denisovans and Neanderthals were closely related. But while evidence of modern human interbreeding with Neanderthals is found in the genomes of all modern humans outside Africa, evidence of Denisovan interbreeding is found mainly in some modern populations in South-East Asia and Oceania and in traces in human genomes from the rest of Asia, but not in genomes from Africa or Europe.

"These are great studies," says Bence Viola, a palaeoanthropologist at the University of Toronto, who was not directly involved. The new discoveries add much about the species that was not known before — especially about their teeth, which can now be compared to the teeth of unknown hominins from other sites.

More work will be needed to tease out exactly how the three species' histories intertwine.

Questions

Questions 1–5: TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN

  1. Denisovans were first discovered in 2008.
  2. Bianfu Cave is located on the Tibetan Plateau.
  3. The bones from Bianfu Cave were identified using ancient DNA analysis.
  4. Denisovans hunted deer and wild bovids.
  5. Denisovans and Neanderthals were not related.

Questions 6–10: Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

  1. Why couldn't ancient DNA be extracted from the Bianfu Cave remains?

    • A. The bones were too old.
    • B. The cave was warm and unsuitable for DNA preservation.
    • C. The bones were too small.
    • D. The technology did not exist.

  2. How were the remains identified as Denisovan?

    • A. By carbon dating
    • B. By a distinctive amino acid in tooth enamel
    • C. By comparing skull shapes
    • D. By X-ray imaging

  3. What do the Denisovan arm bones suggest about their appearance?

    • A. They were more robust than Neanderthals.
    • B. They were shaped more like modern humans than Neanderthals.
    • C. They were identical to Neanderthal arms.
    • D. They were much shorter than modern humans.

  4. Denisovan interbreeding evidence is found mainly in modern populations from

    • A. Europe and Africa
    • B. South-East Asia and Oceania
    • C. North America
    • D. South America

  5. How many animal bone fragments were recovered from the cave?

    • A. 4
    • B. 60
    • C. 60,000
    • D. 600,000

Questions 11–13: Complete the sentences. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS.

  1. The Denisovan species was first discovered in Siberia's __________ Cave.
  2. The bones were unearthed in the year __________.
  3. The studies were published in the journal __________.

Answers

  1. TRUE
  2. TRUE
  3. FALSE (用牙齿珐琅质中的氨基酸识别，不是DNA)
  4. TRUE
  5. FALSE (亲缘关系很近)
  6. B
  7. B
  8. B
  9. B
  10. C
  11. Denisova
  12. 2019
  13. Nature

Glossary

  • hominin /ˈhɒmɪnɪn/ n. 人科动物
  • enamel /ɪˈnæml/ n. 珐琅质
  • bovid /ˈbəʊvɪd/ n. 牛科动物
  • robust /rəʊˈbʌst/ adj. 粗壮的
  • interbreed /ˌɪntəˈbriːd/ v. 杂交繁殖
  • palaeoanthropologist /ˌpæliəʊˌænθrəˈpɒlədʒɪst/ n. 古人类学家
  • artefact /ˈɑːtɪfækt/ n. 人工制品
  • fragment /ˈfræɡmənt/ n. 碎片

💬 Comments (0)

No comments yet.