Most of a human cheek find in northerly Spain belong to a crude antiquated homo , marking the oldest known evidence of hominins in westerly Europe , anthropologists announced Wednesday .
The facial remains are not those ofHomo antecessor , an archaic human species whose rough 900,000 - year - erstwhile remains were previously find at the same site , according to the inquiry . Rather , the facial fragments belong toHomoaffiniserectus — and the finding , reportedtoday in Nature , indicates that the human population in Europe turned over at the conclusion of the Early Pleistocene .
“ This composition present a novel actor in the taradiddle of human evolution in Europe , Homoaffiniserectus , ” suppose study co - writer Rosa Huguet , a paleoanthropologist at the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social , in a Nature wardrobe briefing . “ This finding allow us to consent that during the early Pleistocene , more than one early human mintage lived in Europe , and that the first hominid to populate westerly Europe was notHomo antecessor , as we antecedently believed . ”
A 3D image and original fossil of a Homo aff. erectus individual found at Sima del Elefante.Image: Maria D. Guillén / IPHES-CERCA / Elena Santos / CENIEH.
TheHomoaffiniserectusfragment was discovered in 2022 and is between 1.1 million and 1.4 million year old . The fogey is the earliest human fossil so far found in western Europe , concord to María Martinón - Torres , a researcher at Centro Nacional de Investigacíon sobre la Evolución Humana .
The species ’ name can be abridge toHomoaff.erectus . In taxonomy , “ aff . ” come from the Latin affinis , meaning “ related to , ” and it ’s often used to indicate a species intimately bear on to another but not necessarily the same ( in this case , a species very similar to , or perchance being , Homo erectus — a human species that lived from about 2 million to 100,000 years ago that ’s believed to be one of our direct ancestors ) .
The squad nickname the fossil Pink , after Pink Floyd , referring to the band ’s albumThe Dark Side of the Moon . ( In Spanish , La Cara Oculta de la Luna , withCarabeing interpreted as either “ side ” or “ face . ” ) But that ’s not the only twofold meaning — the team also affectionately considers Pink a reference work to the field ’s confidential information author , quote above , as in Spanish , “ Rosa ” stand for pink .
A small animal rib with cut marks found on the site. Graphic: Nature / Maria D. Guillén / IPHES-CERCA.
The facial sherd — which was witness among about 6,000 fogy remains , include creature bones with cut bull’s eye — belonged to an former human that predated theHomo antecessorremains on a internet site less than 820 feet ( 250 beat ) away by about half a million years . The discovery reveals aspects of hominin migration and evolution further back in sentence than other hominin remains from Europe .
“ It ’s plain that about one million years ago there was a replacing in the European universe , ” said José María Bermúdez de Castro , a CENIEH paleoanthropologist and atomic number 27 - source of the paper , during the same briefing . “ A species , possibly related toHomo erectus , would have given fashion toHomo antecessor . ”
Homoaff.erectushas more primitive facial feature — specifically in the area of the cheek — thanHomo antecessor , Martinón - Torres added , with the latter ’s mid - face area bear resemblance to our ( Homo sapiens ) features . Whereas our face and that ofH. antecessoris erect and flat , Homoaff.erectus ‘ face projects fore , similar toHomo erectusspecimens . Hence the coinage designation — the team does not commit to labelling the individualHomo erectus , but recognizes similarities with the more well - known hominid mathematical group , though the team can not conclusively assign it toHomo erectus . It may be an solely different species .
The archaeological work at Sima del Elefante. Photo: Maria D. Guillén / IPHES-CERCA.
The next challenge for the team is to find more fossils that clarify the identity ofHomoaff.erectus , its kinship to other hominin specie , and perhaps explain why the population gave way toHomo antecessor . The population is a “ shot ” of the group that entered Europe when the climatical conditions allowed , Martinón - Torres said .
“ These population are dissimilar from the earliest hominins that have been documented outside Africa , ” she added , referring to theDmanisi homininsfrom Georgia , add that the newly identify human mathematical group is “ Somewhere in an evolutionary space in between the early hominins recover outside Africa — represented by the Dmanisi hominins — andHomo antecessor . ”
Though the squad is not sure that the specimen isHomo erectus , Martinón - Torres added that it is the stuffy affair toHomo erectusyet line up in Europe .
It ’s been a heady workweek for human origins research . Yesterday , a squad of paleoanthropologistsfound evidenceof similar behaviour in Neanderthal and early modern human groups that dwell the Levant around 100,000 age ago — long afterHomoaff.erectusandHomo antecessordisappeared . Neanderthals are also now run — but they were such close relatives of our own specie that thetwo grouping interbreed , and Neanderthal DNApersistsin our genomes today .
The team ’s next steps are to keep excavate — they’ve yet to work into the deepest stratum of the Sima del Elefante site where theHomoaff.erectusface was found .
It is singular that the Pleistocene — an epoch so late in Earth ’s history — hosted such a multifariousness of hominins in a neighborhood as small as westerly Europe , even though they were separated by hundreds of thousands of years .
Though the newly delineate bone sherd do not altogether dissolve aspects of our evolutionary extraction — if anything , they further complicate the narration — they contribute to an progressively remarkable and complex story of how our species emerged from a diversity of hominin groups and compensate the Earth with a population of 8 billion strong .
ancient humansanthropologyHomo sapiensHuman migrationHuman stock
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