A fossil of a part of the face of a human ancestor is the oldest of Europe Western, archaeologists reported Wednesday.
The incomplete skull – a section of the bone of the left cheek and the upper jaw – was found in the north of Spain In 2022. He fossil It has between 1.1 million and 1.4 million years old, according to an investigation published in Nature magazine.
“The fossil is exciting”said Eric Delson, a paleontologist from the American Museum of Natural History, who did not participate in the study. “It is the first time we have significant remains of more than one million years in Western Europe.”
A collection of older fossils of human ancestors was previously found in Georgia, near the crossroads of Eastern Europe and Asia. It is estimated that these fossils are 1.8 million years old.
The Spanish fossil is the first evidence that clearly shows that the human ancestors “were doing excursions to Europe” at that time, said Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian Human Origins program.
But there is still no evidence that the first arrivals stay there for a long time, he said. “They can reach a new place and then extinguish,” said Potts, who did not have a role in the study.
The partial skull presents many similarities with Homo Erectus, but there are also some anatomical differences, said Rosa Huguet, co -author of the study and archaeologist at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution in Tarragona, Spain.
Homo Erectus emerged around two million years ago and moved from Africa to regions of Asia and Europe, with the last individuals extinguishing approximately 100,000 years ago, Potts said.
It can be a challenge to identify which group of primitive humans a fossil finding belongs if there is only one fragment instead of many bones that show a variety of characteristics, said Christoph Zollikofer, Paleoantropologist at the University of Zurich, who did not participate in the study.
The same Cuevas complex in the mountains of Atapuerca in Spain, where the new fossil was found, had also previously provided other significant clues about the ancient human past. Researchers who work in the region have also found more recent fossils in Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens Primitive.