What do Denisovans really look like? This problem has always plagued the scientific community. Based on the methods of ancient protein and ancient DNA analysis, the team of Fu Qiaomei from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in cooperation with the team of Ji Qiang from Hebei University of Geosciences, carried out in-depth research on a nearly complete ancient human skull found in Harbin at least 146000 years ago, and found that Harbin ancient humans were Denisovans, and mitochondria belonged to the known early Denisovans branch, and solved the mystery of Denisovans' appearance. Two achievements were published on the 18th in the journals Science and Cell. The Denisovans are a mysterious group of early Homo sapiens, named after the Denisovan Cave discovered in Siberia, and lived between 200000 and 50000 years ago. Although their teeth or skeletal fragments have been found successively in the Baishiya Cave on the Qinghai Tibet Plateau in China and in the waters of Penghu in Taiwan, suggesting that this population may have been widely distributed in Asia, these remains are generally more fragmented. This seriously hinders the academic community's understanding of the morphological characteristics, geographical distribution, and role in the evolution of ancient humans in East Asia. The discovery of a nearly complete ancient human skull fossil in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, has brought hope for solving these problems. It has a history of at least 146000 years, and its mandible bears significant similarities to the Denisovan mandible on the Qinghai Tibet Plateau, suggesting that it may belong to the Denisovan people. To solve this puzzle, researchers have conducted research on this ancient human skull fossil and the trace dental calculus attached to it. They have made significant breakthroughs in two aspects. Firstly, they established a novel method system for automatically analyzing ancient proteins, obtaining the highest quality and most informative ancient human protein data to date from skulls. By analyzing key features on proteins, they confirmed that the ancient humans in Harbin belong to the human family, and their protein characteristics are highly matched with the known Siberian Denisovans. Systematic analysis also showed that the genetic relationship between the two is very close. Secondly, facing the century old challenge of extracting ancient DNA from the skull itself, researchers have taken a different approach and turned their attention to the trace dental calculus attached to the skull - only 0.3 milligrams and 0.5 milligrams. They specifically identify and screen ultra short DNA fragments with ancient damage characteristics from these tiny samples. In the end, we successfully extracted mitochondrial DNA unique to the Denisovan people from 0.3 milligrams of dental calculus, and analysis showed that the genes of ancient humans in Harbin belonged to an early lineage of Denisovan caves in Siberia. ”Fu Qiaomei said. Fu Qiaomei stated that these two significant achievements mutually confirm each other, for the first time directly linking a nearly complete ancient human skull with molecular evidence of the Denisovan people, and for the first time linking the relatively complete skull morphology of the Denisovan people. Meanwhile, the reviewers also highly praised this achievement. They claimed that the breakthrough of this study lies in demonstrating excellent experimental and computer analysis techniques, and it is a research with a key contribution - it finally gave the Denisovan people a 'face' and provided the possibility for identifying other Denisovan fossils.