Fossilised leg bones recovered from the seafloor off Taiwan belong to Denisovans who stood up to six feet three inches tall, scientists have revealed.
Protein analysis of a thigh bone and a shin bone dredged from the Penghu Channel links the specimens to the ancient human lineage, which split from Neanderthals roughly 550,000 years ago.
The individuals represented by the fossils weighed between 183 and 201 pounds, placing them among the largest ancient humans known from the Ice Age and substantially larger than average modern men.
Independent researcher Jimmy Corsetti suggested the extraordinary dimensions could have inspired biblical stories about the Nephilim, a group of ancient giants, while pointing to the seabed discovery location as potential evidence of the Great Flood.
However, the study presents no evidence connecting the fossils to biblical accounts, and the findings led by the University of Tokyo have not yet undergone peer review.
Biblical Giant Claims and Flood Speculation
Corsetti raised the hypothesis on social media platform X, asking whether Denisovans were the Nephilim giants mentioned in ancient religious texts.
"New discovery indicates that Denisovans were 8in TALLER than the average man today," Corsetti posted on X. "I’ve asked before, and I’ll ask again: Were Denisovans the “Nephilim Giants” described in the Bible?"
Referring to the underwater recovery site, he added: "Btw, the discovered bones were found on the SEAFLOOR! Gee, almost as if a Great Flood actually happened… (it did, regardless if these bones are of an unrelated timeframe)."
The Nephilim are mentioned twice in the Old Testament, first in Genesis 6:4 shortly before the account of the Great Flood, and again in Numbers 13:33.
They are described more extensively in Chapters 6 through 15 of the Book of the Watchers, the first section of the ancient religious work known as 1 Enoch.
That account says fallen angels called the Watchers took human wives who gave birth to enormous and violent giants that brought chaos and bloodshed to Earth, leading God to send a flood and declare that the dead giants' spirits would remain as evil spirits on Earth.
Reconstructing the Penghu Leg Fossils
While Corsetti connected the discovery to ancient religious accounts, researchers focused instead on what the enormous bones reveal about the physical structure of Denisovans.
The partial fossils include a thigh bone known as Penghu 2, estimated to have measured about 19.3 inches when complete, and a shin bone designated as Penghu 3, which was probably around 17 inches long and contained a bulge caused by a healed injury.
Because neither fossil was complete, the research team reconstructed its original size by comparing it with similarly shaped leg bones from ancient and modern humans.
Analysis showed the thigh bone belonged to an individual who stood around five feet 11 inches tall and weighed 183 pounds, while the shin bone belonged to a person who may have reached approximately six feet three inches and weighed 201 pounds.
By comparison, the average height for modern men is five feet nine inches. Researchers could not determine sex from biological evidence, but the enormous size suggests both specimens probably came from males.
The team estimated that Denisovans were eight to 12 inches taller and 44 to 66 pounds heavier than Homo erectus individuals that lived in northern China about 750,000 years ago.
Challenging Evolutionary Body Size Rules
The researchers, led by the University of Tokyo, stated in the study: "Our findings demonstrate that the Denisovan population at the northern circle had larger body size than earlier Homo erectus as well as Late Pleistocene Homo sapiens in eastern Asia."
They added: "This challenges the generally held expectation that Pleistocene Homo followed Bergmann’s rule that anticipates latitudinal decline of body size, and suggests that the large Denisovan brain resulted from their large body size at least partly."
Bergmann's rule predicts that human populations living closer to the equator should generally be smaller than those in colder northern climates, but researchers noted that the cold period during which the Penghu Denisovans lived cannot by itself explain their extraordinary proportions.
Previous Denisovan fossils had revealed large brains, powerful jaws and unusually large teeth, but a scarcity of bones below the skull had prevented scientists from confidently reconstructing their overall height and build.
Diet, Hunting Methods and Genetic Interbreeding
Chemical evidence from the shin bone suggests that the individual ate a meat-heavy diet, while other discoveries indicate Denisovans hunted animals ranging from mountain-dwelling goats and sheep to huge herbivores and carnivores.
The team proposed that large, powerful bodies may have helped Denisovans pursue prey using a different and potentially less sophisticated set of tools than early modern humans.
The thigh bone also possesses a thick, angular ridge along its rear that is more commonly associated with modern humans, a feature linked in hunter-gatherers to extensive movement over land.
Researchers said it could indicate that Taiwanese Denisovans led highly mobile lives, or that they acquired the feature by interbreeding with Homo sapiens, as genetic evidence shows the groups exchanged DNA in southern Asia.
However, the team stressed that more Denisovan fossils and genetic evidence will be required to explain the unusual trait and determine whether such large bodies were widespread across the population.
