A human fossil, about 1.4 million years old, reveals the facial features of the oldest human
A team of paleoanthropologists has discovered a human face fossil estimated to be around 1.4 million years old in Spain, making it the oldest fossil of its kind found in Europe, and revealing the unique facial features of the oldest human in Europe.
The fossil was found during excavations in June at the "Sima del Elefante" archaeological site, located in the Atapuerca Mountains near the city of Burgos in northern Spain, known for its rich fossil record.
The fossil contains parts of a human skull, which the researchers said in a translated statement. It is believed that the fragmented skull is the oldest of its kind in Europe, and includes part of the upper jaw bone and a human tooth.
Edgar Tellez, a doctoral student at the National Research Center for Human Evolution in Burgos, discovered the maxillary bone, which lies 2 meters deep in the clay soil.
Before this discovery, the oldest known human fossils were discovered in Europe in 2008, dating back to 1.2 million years ago, when the discovery included part of the mandible bone, and many other bone fragments.
But the current discovery came as a surprise to the researchers, who did not expect to find fossils older than those already discovered at the site.
In terms of what the fossil's facial features reveal, paleoanthropologists believe that, similar to the earlier fossil discovery, the maxillary bone exhibits characteristics that show the evolutionary pattern of the human face.
"In this upper jaw there is also a cephalic projection, as in the lower jaw found in the 2008 discovery, which could indicate that this modern face was already present at this time," Tellez said.
In other words, Tellez and his team hypothesized that the bone could be more that of a person belonging to modern Europeans than of ape-like primates such as Homo habilis, an extinct species of ancient human from Pleistocene Africa (2.6 million years ago to 11,700 years ago). .
On the other hand, John Hawkes, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has not worked on the recent fossils, said the new discovery helps provide insight into the people who once inhabited this region.
"We don't yet know exactly what kind of human this fragment of the upper jaw would belong to, and it will take a lot of work and comparison to determine this," Hooks added.
For their part, researchers at the discovery site said it would take additional study before they could determine the exact age of the upper jaw bone and whether it was related to other fossils found there.
Source: websites