Wikipedia tells me that they ... > ... are proposed to be the direct ancestors to several human species, such as H. heidelbergensis, H. antecessor, Neanderthal

Wikipedia tells me that they ... > ... are proposed to be the direct ancestors to several human species, such as H. heidelbergensis, H. antecessor, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans. But by the time they vanished, I gather that those other species already existed.