Sign up for a newsletter on the theory of Wonders CNN. Explore the universe with news about entertaining discoveries, scientific achievements and much more.
Cnn
.
The history of human evolution in Europe is new.
The rocky bone fragments found in the cave in Northern Spain in 2022 found a previously unknown human population, which lived more than 1.1 million years ago, according to new studies.
Found on the site of Sim -Del -Notewante in the mountains of Atopaurk, fossils make up a partial skull consisting of the left side of the adult hominine. Mineralized bones are the earliest human fossils that are still found in Western Europe.
However, it was not immediately obvious what kind of prehistoric person the team found, and a study described on Wednesday in Nature’s magazine did not allocate a final response.
The team suspects that samples belonged to Homo Erectus, the species But whose remains have never been finally found in Europe.
“Such a conclusion is the most honest proposal that we can make with the evidence we have,” said Maria Martinon-Tors, a price director, a national research center for human evolution on Tuesday.
“It’s cautious, but
The Mountain Region of Spain, where fossils were found, was an important place for paleoanthropology.
In the mid-1990s, scientists identified an early relative of a man known as Homo Antcentor with approximately 80 fossils found on-site near Sim-Del-name called Gran Dolina. These remain about 850,000 years.
However, Martinon-Tresz said the fossil morphology found in 2022 did not comply with the features of Homo Antectory. It was believed that this archaic man was the earliest famous resident of Western Europe, predicting the Neanderthals who appeared on the continent about 400,000 years ago.
Homo Antcentor had “a very modern face, very similar to the face we are with our species, Homo Sapiens, which is vertical and flat. However, this new hominine is different,” she said.
He “has a much more acting face forward … making it look like other homo erectus (samples),” she added.
The team also repeated the partial mandible found in 2007 in Sim -Del -callnte, but at a slightly higher sediment level. Now the authors of the study believe that it belonged to the same population of prehistoric people.
However, only with small parts of the face could it be finally determined by the type of homina. Thus, the team assigned it Homo Affinis Erectus, and Affinis means it looks closely linked but different from the known species.
“We still have to excavate the lower levels of the Sima -Del -call. So who knows? We may have more surprises,” Martinon -Tors said.
“I think the key conclusion is that for the first time we documented the population of hominine, which we did not know what in Europe.”
Chris Stringer, leader of human evolution studies at the London Museum, said the opening was a “very important find”.
“The form of the face is different from the antresa (and H. Sapiens) in terms such as a less outstanding nose and less delicate cheekbones, and thus more reminiscent of some fossil erection,” said Stringer, who did not participate in the research, email said.
“But I think the authors are only right to consult Elefante with H. Erectus. They are too incomplete for any final conclusion.”
Reconstruction of fragmented fossils requires a combination of traditional methods, such as analyzing and comparing fossils through visual inspection, with advanced visualization and 3D -analysis, the study said. Researchers did not meet with fossils directly, but based on three different ways to get acquainted with a layer of sediment, in which the fossil fossils, they estimated that they are from 1.4 to 1.1 million years.
The team also resumed the bones of animals with sliced ​​traces and stone tools used to suppress carcasses from the site. The population would inhabit forest conditions with wet meadows that would be rich in prey, the study said.