European Roots: Human ancestors go back in time in Spanish cave
By Bruce Bower
Fossil finds in Spain have yielded the earliest known skeletal evidence of human ancestors in Europe, according to a new report. A fossil jaw and tooth from the same individual, found during excavations of a cave called Sima del Elefante in northern Spain’s Atapuerca Mountains, date to between 1.2 million and 1.1 million years old, say anthropologist Eudald Carbonell of Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, Spain, and his colleagues.
![Researchers who retrieved this fossil jaw from a Spanish cave conclude that human ancestors reached Western Europe more than 1 million years ago.](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/7570.jpg?resize=300%2C198&ssl=1)
The investigators assign the new discoveries to the species Homo antecessor. A decade ago, they identified 800,000-year-old fossils from another Atapuerca site as H. antecessor. In the Spanish scientists’ view, H. antecessor was an evolutionary precursor of European Neandertals and modern humans.