New fossils, tools and butchered bones put an elusive human lineage into everyday life.

In 2019, workers doing routine ecological restoration at a quarry in China’s Yunnan province hit something under the soil: bones and stone tools. Nobody realized at the time that this unassuming hole — known as Bianfu Cave, “bat cave,” after its former residents — would turn out to hold the largest collection of Denisovan remains […]