Fragments of a face more than a million years old found in Spanish cave
Researchers have determined that fossilized bone fragments found in a cave in the Sierra de Atapuerca mountains of Northern Spain come from the earliest known face in Western Europe, which belonged to a hominin estimated to be 1.1 million to 1.4 million years old, archaeologists reported Wednesday.
Discovered in 2022, the portions of the left side of an adult face belong to a hominin dubbed 'Pink' after the rock band Pink Floyd. The bones from Pink significantly predate those of Homo antecessor, the oldest hominin species previously found at the site, according to the authors of a study in the journal Nature.
Hominins are the group consisting of modern humans, extinct human species and all our immediate ancestors.
'This paper introduces a new actor in the story of human evolution in Europe,' Rosa Huguet, one of the authors of the Nature study, said at a news conference announcing the results of two years of research into the facial fragments.
Pink appears not to fit neatly into the known hominin species, and has been classified for now as Homo affinis erectus, meaning closely related to Homo erectus, Latin for 'upright man.'
'Homo antecessor shares with Homo sapiens a more modern looking face and a prominent nasal bone structure, whereas Pink's facial features are more primitive, resembling Homo erectus, particularly in its flat and underdeveloped nasal structure,' explained María Martinón-Torres, another of the authors, and director of the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (National Research Center on Human Evolution) in Burgos, Spain.
Martinón-Torres said the designation Homo affinis erectus, 'leaves open the possibility that [Pink] may belong to another species.'
The Atapuerca archeological site, first discovered during construction of a railway trench cut into limestone at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century, has been systematically excavated since 1978, revealing ancient human skulls and some of the earliest evidence of cannibalism ever found.
Pink's remains were uncovered in a cave on the site called Sima del Elefante, Spanish for 'Pit of the Elephant.' At the same level of the cave, researchers uncovered stone tools and animal remains with cut marks.
Homo affinis erectus occupied a humid forest landscape with water coursing through the area near the cave, Huguet said. 'It was a wetter, more temperate climate than now.'
John Hawks, chairman of the department of anthropology at University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved in the study, called it a 'really cool paper.' He added: 'It's always great to see a new fossil of course, but in this case the fossil helps add something to our knowledge of how some of the first human relatives in Europe were connected to other places.'
Comparisons in the paper, Hawks said, all support the idea that the latest hominin found in the Sima del Elefante 'was a kind of relative of Homo erectus fossils found much further to the east, as far as Indonesia, as well as in their first homeland of Africa.'
The discovery of evidence that different hominin populations occupied Western Europe during the early Pleistocene epoch 'suggests that this region was a key point in the evolutionary history of the genus Homo,' said Eudald Carbonell, another author of the Nature paper and co-director of the Atapuerca Project, which examines human evolution based on evidence found primarily at the site. The early Pleistocene epoch extends from about 2.6 million years ago to 781,000 years ago.
Martinón-Torres said Pink occupied an evolutionary space between the oldest known hominins found in South Africa — estimated to be 3.4 million to 3.7 million years old — and Homo antecessor, which is approximately about 860,000 years old. She said 'most of the evidence' reinforces the theory that the hominins found in Atapuerca came to Spain from Eastern Europe.
The discoveries detailed in Nature represent the efforts of a large multidisciplinary team and dozens of workers who extracted several tons of sediment at the site.
The research team has more fieldwork to do, including the excavation of lower levels of Sima del Elefante, said Martinón-Torres.
'So who knows, we may have more surprises,' she said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Ancient carbon emissions from rivers may accelerate climate change: study
MILWAUKEE - An incredibly complex area of science with no simple answers, climate change is one of the most significant and most hotly debated topics in science. A groundbreaking new study published in the journal "Nature" adds to the complexity by upending long-held beliefs about carbon emissions from our rivers and streams. The backstory Until this study, scientists typically thought most carbon dioxide – CO₂ – released from rivers originated from carbon that had been absorbed from the atmosphere since around 1955. That date is important because it marks the year when nuclear weapons testing sharply increased atmospheric radiocarbon, making it easier to distinguish newer carbon from older sources through radiocarbon dating. The study revealed that, in fact, nearly 60% of that CO₂ actually comes from ancient carbon. Some of that carbon could be thousands of years old. By the numbers Rivers and streams emit nearly 2 billion tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere annually. Only 41% of that CO₂ comes from after 1955, and the remaining 59% originates from ancient sources. The study analyzed nearly 1,200 river samples globally. Large rivers and those in arid, mountainous or carbonate-rich landscapes emit the most ancient carbon. FREE DOWNLOAD: Get breaking news alerts in the FOX LOCAL Mobile app for iOS or Android Why you should care Carbon emissions, both human-induced and natural, are the main cause of climate change. The presence of this ancient carbon suggests our landscapes store more human-emitted CO₂ than previously estimated. Climate change itself, along with erosion and land-use changes, could accelerate the release of this ancient carbon, which could then amplify the warming of our atmosphere. The study shifts how we understand what is known as the "carbon budget," or the balance of carbon sources that are critical to climate modeling. The Good News More carbon may be stored in land than we thought. Because only 41% of the carbon dioxide released from rivers and streams into the atmosphere comes from modern carbon, the study suggests that land-based ecosystems are holding onto more human-emitted carbon than previously believed. That means forests, soils and underground reservoirs may be buffering some of the impact of climate change better than climate models have indicated. While the massive amounts of older carbon are a concern, it is leaking out far more slowly, which could give scientists and policymakers more time to implement mitigation strategies. It's a reminder that the Earth's systems are very complex and potentially more resilient than some have thought. What's next Pinpointing the precise age of river- and stream-based CO₂ remains difficult due to seasonal and geographic variability in water flow. Future studies need to conduct high-resolution measurements to track carbon age across time and locations, and researchers need to further examine how climate-driven changes – like droughts, heavy rain and flooding – can affect carbon release patterns. SIGN UP TODAY: Get daily headlines, breaking news emails from FOX6 News There's also a pressing need to assess whether ancient carbon is being released at a faster pace in response to human activity and environmental change. The "Nature" study helps us respect our planet for its resilience but also reminds us of our need to treat our home with respect. The Source Information in this report is from the FOX6 Weather Experts and: Dean, J. F., et al. (2025). Nature, 642, 105–111.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
New T-Rex ancestor discovered in drawers of Mongolian institute
Misidentified bones that languished in the drawers of a Mongolian institute for 50 years belong to a new species of tyrannosaur that rewrites the family history of the mighty T-Rex, scientists said Wednesday. This slender ancestor of the massive Tyrannosaurus Rex was around four metres (13 feet) long and weighed three quarters of a tonne, according to a new study in the journal Nature. "It would have been the size of a very large horse," study co-author Darla Zelenitsky of Canada's University of Calgary told AFP. The fossils were first dug up in southeastern Mongolia in the early 1970s but at the time were identified as belonging to a different tyrannosaur, Alectrosaurus. For half a century, the fossils sat in the drawers at the Institute of Paleontology of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences in the capital Ulaanbaatar. Then PhD student Jared Voris, who was on a trip to Mongolia, started looking through the drawers and noticed something was wrong, Zelenitsky said. It turned out the fossils were well-preserved, partial skeletons of two different individuals of a completely new species. "It is quite possible that discoveries like this are sitting in other museums that just have not been recognised," Zelenitsky added. - 'Messy' family history - They named the new species Khankhuuluu mongoliensis, which roughly means the dragon prince of Mongolia because it is smaller than the "king" T-Rex. Zelenitsky said the discovery "helped us clarify a lot about the family history of the tyrannosaur group because it was really messy previously". The T-Rex represented the end of the family line. It was the apex predator in North America until 66 million years ago, when an asteroid bigger than Mount Everest slammed into the Gulf of Mexico. Three quarters of life on Earth was wiped out, including all the dinosaurs that did not evolve into birds. Around 20 million years earlier, Khankhuuluu -- or another closely related family member -- is now believed to have migrated from Asia to North America using the land bridge that once connected Siberia and Alaska. This led to tyrannosaurs evolving across North America. Then one of these species is thought to have crossed back over to Asia, where two tyrannosaur subgroups emerged. One was much smaller, weighing under a tonne, and was nicknamed Pinocchio rex for its long snout. The other subgroup was huge and included behemoths like the Tarbosaurus, which was only a little smaller than the T-rex. One of the gigantic dinosaurs then left Asia again for North America, eventually giving rise to the T-Rex, which dominated for just two million years -- until the asteroid struck. dl/gil
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Quantum Computers Simulate Particle 'String Breaking' in a Physics Breakthrough
Subatomic particles such as quarks can pair up when linked by 'strings' of force fields — and release energy when the strings are pulled to the point of breaking. Two teams of physicists have now used quantum computers to mimic this phenomenon and watch it unfold in real time. The results, described in two Nature papers on June 4, are the latest in a series of breakthroughs towards using quantum computers for simulations that are beyond the ability of any ordinary computers. 'String breaking is a very important process that is not yet fully understood from first principles,' says Christian Bauer, a physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in Berkeley, California. Physicists can calculate the final results of particle collisions that form or break strings using classical computers, but cannot fully simulate what happens in between. The success of the quantum simulations is 'incredibly encouraging,' Bauer says. [Sign up for Today in Science, a free daily newsletter] Each experiment was conducted by an international collaboration involving academic and industry researchers — one team at QuEra Computing, a start-up company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and another at the Google Quantum AI Lab in Santa Barbara, California. The researchers using QuEra's Aquila machine encoded information in atoms that were arranged in a 2D honeycomb pattern, each suspended in place by an optical 'tweezer'. The quantum state of each atom — a qubit that could be excited or relaxed — represented the electric field at a point in space, explains co-author Daniel González-Cuadra, a theoretical physicist now at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Madrid. In the other experiment, researchers encoded the 2D quantum field in the states of superconducting loops on Google's Sycamore chip. The teams used diametrically opposite quantum-simulation philosophies. The atoms in Aquila were arranged so that the electrostatic forces between them mimicked the behaviour of the electric field, and continuously evolved towards their own states of lower energy — an approach called analogue quantum simulation. The Google machine was instead used as a 'digital' quantum simulator: the superconducting loops were made to follow the evolution of the quantum field 'by hand', through a discrete sequence of manipulations. In both cases, the teams set up strings in the field that effectively acted like rubber bands connecting two particles. Depending on how the researchers tuned the parameters, the strings could be stiff or wobbly, or could break up. 'In some cases, the whole string just dissolves: the particles become deconfined,' says Frank Pollmann, a physicist at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Garching, Germany, who helped to lead the Google experiment. Although simulating strings in a 2D electric field could have applications for studying the physics of materials, it is still a long way from fully simulating high-energy interactions, such as those that occur in particle colliders, which are in 3D and involve the much more complex strong nuclear force. 'We do not have a clear path at this point how to get there,' says Monika Aidelsburger, a physicist at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Munich, Germany. Still, the latest results are exciting, and progress in quantum simulation in general has been 'really amazing and very fast,' Aidelsburger says. Last year, Bauer and his LBNL colleague Anthony Ciavarella were among the first teams to simulate the strong nuclear force on a quantum computer. Approaches that replace qubits with qudits — which can have more than two quantum states and can be more realistic representations of a quantum field — could also make simulations more powerful, researchers say. This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on June 5, 2025.
