A study carried out by the National Center for Research on Human Evolution (CNIEH) has specified the age of the oldest strata of the Atapuerca site at 900,000 years , one of the most relevant archaeological complexes in the world and which has provided us with more information for understand prehistory. Under these primitive sediments, the fossil remains of our oldest ancestor in Europe, Hommo antecesso r, a hominid species that practiced cannibalism, were found in 1994. This discovery has therefore also made it possible to date the time in which our predecessor inhabited the Sierra Burgos, which until now had only been estimated prior to the Middle Pleistocene.
This advance in geochronology is presented as a solution to the intense scientific debate on the more or less truthful dating of paleontological sites, since it has managed to precisely specify (with margins of error of only one hundred thousand years) the age of the earth particles. and mineral that the oldest fossils bury . In the TD6 stratum, located in the Lower Palaeolithic Gran Dolina cave, which according to this work is almost a millennium old, the remains of Hommo antecessor have been found, but also other 90 human fossils and more than 200 stone fragments carved.
The innovative method consists of combining a paramagnetic resonance technique, based on the analysis of the polarity of the materials that make up the stratigraphic layers, with an optical luminescence technique. The next step for paleontologists is to determine the age of the fossils individually, in order to compare it with the information obtained from the sediments and develop a reliable chronology of life at the dawn of human evolution .
“This site has given rise to thousands of fossils and artifacts, and has become a point of reference in studies on the Pleistocene and the first human occupations outside the African continent,” said CNIEH researcher Josep Parés to the agency of scientific news SINC.
