About one percent of the genetic makeup of people from southern China and the surrounding region comes from an extinct group of humans dubbed the Denisovans, a new study says.

Considered by some to be a sort of sister species to the Neanderthals, the Denisovans—who may have represented an entirely separate human species—are largely a mystery, though they're thought to have had big teeth.

The latest find suggests that the two human types mated and bore offspring, and their descendants are still alive today in mainland Asia.

The new study is based on DNA extracted from a 40,000-year-old Denisovan finger bone discovered in Siberian Russia's Altai Mountains in 2008.

A previous study, published by the journal Nature in 2010, investigated the