World's oldest needle found in Siberian cave that stitches together human history

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Notice the term 'hominin' (not hominid) in the article ?

The term hominid describes a much broader grouping, and in fact, the Denisovans belong to the genus Homo, making them even closer relatives than the other hominins within the family of hominids:

Homo is the genus that comprises the species Homo sapiens, which includes modern humans, as well as several extinct species classified as ancestral to or closely related to modern humans—as for examples Homo habilis and Homo neanderthalensis ...

Taxonomically, Homo is the only genus assigned to the subtribe Hominina which, with the subtribes Australopithecina and Panina, comprise the tribe Hominini (see evolutionary tree below). All species of the genus Homo plus those species of the australopithecines that arose after the split from Pan are called hominins.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo

(I believe that should be "is comprised of ...&quot

All such speciations are subject to revision, and there has been *much* revision in the last few decades. This is due not just to new fossil discoveries but to new methods (such as fossil DNA sequencing) and new approaches to taxonomic classification, including cladistics (which seems new to nonspecialists but has been around awhile).

Strictly, the Denisovans could be referred to as "hominids" in the same way they could be referred to as "vertebrates" or "mammals" -- they do belong to both those very large groups, but the smallest group which includes organisms other than themselves is the genus Homo. Strictly speaking, we could refer to them as "homs", I suppose, but that would be synonymous with "humans" and so redundant.