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The discovery of Homo antecessor

Atapuerca, Burgos (Alfoz), Burgos

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The discovery of Homo antecessor

Historical milestone · Atapuerca, Burgos (Alfoz), Burgos

The fossils recovered from level TD6 of the Gran Dolina, at least eight hundred thousand years old, were defined in 1997 as a new species, Homo antecessor: the oldest Europeans known at the time. The remains, found in 1994, belong to individuals at least 160 centimetres tall, with a broad chest and already modern facial morphology but with primitive-type teeth and a brain smaller than today's; they made simple pebble tools and flakes of quartz and flint, an industry that may have been a forerunner of the later Acheulean industry. The Atapuerca team proposed that it represented an evolutionary link between Homo ergaster and Homo heidelbergensis, and therefore a probable last common ancestor of modern humans and Neanderthals.

1997

Photo: User:Mario modesto (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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