March 28, 2008

A Jaw-Dropping Find

Researchers unearth the fossil of Europe's oldest human ancestors

By Vickie An

On Wednesday, scientists in Spain announced the discovery of a small piece of jawbone believed to be the oldest known fossil of a human ancestor in Europe. The remarkable find was revealed in the scientific journal Nature. It suggests that people reached the continent far earlier than was previously believed.

JORDI MESTRE—EIA/AP Archaeologists José Maria Bermúdez (left) and Eudald Carbonell hold a 1.3 million-year-old jawbone that they found in the Atapuerca Mountains of Spain.

The remains, a two-inch fragment of a lower jaw with teeth attached, were unearthed last June in a cave in the Atapuerca Mountains of northern Spain. Stone tools and animal bones were also discovered at the site.

Scientists say that the prehistoric jawbone dates up to 1.3 million years old. That makes it 500,000 years older than the previous oldest human fossils found in Europe, that of a species named Homo antecessor. Those remains were uncovered at a different location in the same mountains in 1997.

It's All Relative

Homo antecessor is a possible ancestor of early humans and modern humans. The research team that conducted the dig says that the new fossil appears to be an earlier relative of the species.

The scientific community has been debating the timing of the earliest humans in Europe for years. "This discovery shows . . . that the occupation of Europe happened very early and much faster than we had thought," says Spanish archaeologist Eudald Carbonell, who co-led the dig.

Chris Stringer, a researcher in London who is not involved in the study, praises the work of the Atapuerca team in determining the age of the newfound fossil. "This is a well-dated site," Stringer says. "As much as any site that age can be."

The Story Continues

The discovery opens a fresh chapter in the history of human settlement in Europe. Carbonell predicts that with the finding of human fossils 1.3 million years old on the continent, researchers can now expect to unearth older ones - even up to 1.8 million years old - in other European regions. "This has to be the next discovery," he says. "This is the scientific hypothesis."

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