An ancient upper jaw bone discovered in Spain reveals the unique facial features of an individual that may be the oldest human relative in Europe.
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Topic: 1.4 Million Year Old Fossils Indicate That Modern Human Faces Existed Before Thought
A team of paleontologists unearthed the fossils in June at Cima del Elephant (Spanish for “elephant pit”), an archaeological site in the Atapuraca Mountains near the northern Spanish city of Burgos known for its rich fossil record. known as.
The fragmented skull, believed to be the oldest of its kind ever found in Europe, includes the upper jawbone (maxilla) and a tooth of a hominid that is about 1.4 years old, the researchers said in a translated statement.
Lived million years ago. According to the Australian Museum, the hominid group includes all living and extinct members of the human and great ape family tree, including humans and our earliest human relatives, as well as chimpanzees and gorillas.
Prior to this discovery, the oldest hominid fossils discovered in Europe (found in Cima del Elephante in 2008) were from 1.2 million years ago.
According to a 2012 study published in the British Dental Journal, the find included part of the jawbone, or lower jawbone, and several pieces of bone.
The latest discovery came as a surprise to the researchers, who were not expecting to find fossils much older than those found at the site.
The upper jaw bone, located about 6.5 feet (2 meters) deeper than the fossils found in 2008, was discovered by Edgar Telles, a doctoral student at the National Center for Research on Human Evolution in Burgos, according to El Pace.
inquired. A newspaper in Spain Paleontologists believe that, similar to previous fossil finds, the upper jawbone exhibits features that reflect the evolution of the human face.
“This maxilla likewise has an upward projection, like the mandible found in [2008], which might demonstrate that this cutting edge face was at that point present around then,” Tellez told El Pais.
In other words, Téllez and his team theorize that the bone may belong to someone more closely related to ape-like primates than modern-day Europeans, such as Homo habilis, an extinct early human from Africa.
The generation Pleistocene epoch (2.6 million years ago to 11,700 years ago). Researchers believe the fossil may have come from Homo antececer (Latin for “pioneer man”), whose position in the human family tree is disputed but may be a close cousin of modern humans and Neanderthals, published in 1999.
According to a study by Journal of Human Evolution. (The first fossil remains of Homo archaea were found in Attapuraca in 1994.) John Hawkes, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was not involved with the recent dig,
said the new discovery helps gain insight into the populations that first settled the area. “We still don’t know exactly where this piece of the upper jaw is going to fit, and the team will have to do a lot of work and comparisons to determine [that],” Hawkes told Live Science.
“But whatever they determine, it’s associated with a site with evidence of behavior. And every fragment that we have associated with a site with evidence of behavior, like stone tool making or hunting, Tells us the behavioral abilities of ancestors and relatives. Ours.
To me, that’s the important part.” Researchers at the site said more studies will be needed before they can determine the exact age of the upper jawbone and whether it is related to other fossils found there.
