Denisova Cave in southern Siberia is the type locality of the Denisovans, an archaic hominin group related to Neanderthals. The dozen hominin remains recovered from the deposits also include Neanderthals and the child of a Neanderthal and a Denisovan, suggesting that Denisova Cave was a contact zone between these archaic hominins. Uncertainties persist, however, about the order in which they appeared at the site, the timing and environmental context of hominin occupation, and their association with archaeological assemblages. Here we report the analysis of DNA from 728 sediment samples, collected in a grid-like manner from the Pleistocene layers. Ancient faunal and hominin mitochondrial (mt) DNA was retrieved from 685 and 175 samples, respectively.

Multiple sequence alignment file

This submission contains a multiple sequence alignment file with consensus sequences for the 13 protein coding genes (11.3kb) of the mitochondrial genome of DNA recovered from four sediment samples.