The Atapuerca site contains one of the richest records of prehistoric human occupation in Europe. Until now, the oldest hominid fossil found in Europe had been a jaw found in the same place in 2007, which was determined to be 1.2 million years old.
Now, researchers from the Atapuerca Foundation have found in excavations at level TE7 of the Sima del Elefante cave site in Atapuerca a jaw fragment that could be the oldest known fossil of a human ancestor found to date in Europe. Paleontologists from the Atapuerca mountain range claim that the fossil is around 1.4 million years old.
When did a face like ours emerge?
For a couple of decades, scientists have debated the most consistent evolutionary model to explain the origin of the modern face. We had Homo antecessor , whose age has been stipulated at 850,000 years, as the oldest recorded modern face in human history. This new finding gives us a new perspective to delve into the answer closer to reality.
The discovery took place on June 30, when a series of clay-covered bone remains were recovered. After cleaning and analyzing them by several scientists, it was determined that these remains corresponded to a human maxilla. The fossil was recovered two meters below another human jaw recovered in 2007 that was designated Homo sp. (undetermined species due to lack of conclusive data) but it could be an individual that may have been part of the same biological population as the individual in the current jaw. If this is the case, it would be one of the first populations to colonize Europe.
Fossils have yet to be accurately dated.
The researchers, who have been working at the Atapuerca site since 1978 , will now have to use scientific dating techniques that will be carried out at the National Center for Research on Human Evolution in Burgos, near Atapuerca, to date with the greatest precision. the jaw fragment. According to experts, this process will take about six to eight months to be ready . They will work to identify the specific type of human ancestor and determine the age of the bone.
“What we can say is that we have found a very important and interesting fossil that belongs to one of the first populations that arrived in Europe,” said José María Bermúdez de Castro, one of the directors of the archaeological site.
A study published this year concluded that the first jaws of ancient humans evolved from gills to be strong and agile, allowing us, both humans and animals, to process a richer variety of foods. Almost all vertebrates have jaws with teeth, which first evolved more than 400 million years ago.
At the moment, this finding represents a crucial step in the investigations of Atapuerca and a very important advance in the investigation to know its antiquity, the nature and the protagonists of the first human occupations in Europe.
Atapuerca was included in the year 2000 in the list of UNESCO world heritage sites, which gave it access to conservation funds from the United Nations.
Reference: ATAPUERCA FOUNDATION
