Oldest European human fossil found

Geological sciences researchers Josep Pares and Greg M. Stock are members of a team that has discovered the oldest known remains of human ancestors in Western Europe.

The find shows that members of the genus Homo, to which modern humans belong, colonized the region much earlier than previously believed. Details of the discovery were published in the March 27 issue of the journal Nature.

The fossil — a small piece of jawbone with a few teeth — was found last year in a cave in the mountains of northern Spain, along with primitive stone tools and bones of animals that appear to have been butchered. The team, led by Eudald Carbonell of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, Spain, used three separate techniques to determine that the fossil is about 1.3 million years old. That's 500,000 years older than the previous oldest known humanlike fossils from the area. The new find bolsters the view that Homo reached Europe not long after leaving Africa almost 2 million years ago.

The researchers tentatively classified the new fossil as Homo antecessor (Pioneer Man), a species that may represent the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans.

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