Archaeologists Find Continent's Oldest Human Face
Archaeologists have discovered fossilized facial bones of an ancient human race which lived roughly 1.4 million years ago, according to a study published in Nature.
The remains were first discovered in 2022 in the Sima del Elefante cave in Burgos, Spain. The person, nicknamed 'Pink,' whose facial bones were found by scientists, is thought to have lived in ancient Iberia roughly one million years before Homo Sapiens inhabited the European continent. Researchers reached that conclusion after running copious tests on Pink's remains and others found in the cave believed to belong to animals who lived around the same time, somewhere between 1.1 million to 1.4 million years ago.
It was initially thought that Pink was a part of a group represented by fossils previously found in the region, but after analyzing the sample, scientists now believe Pink to be a completely new species which has never been detected. The remains, which are the oldest facial bones ever discovered in Western Europe, include several fragments of broken bone along with parts of two teeth."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, director of the National Center for Research on Human Evolution and the study's co-author.
Martinón and her colleagues hypothesize that Pink may belong to one of the earliest human species to reach Western Europe. Pink's species may have even preceded Homo erectus, which was the first human species to walk upright. Further evidence obtained from the fossils would suggest Pink and his people inhabited the land as early as 1.8 million years ago.
While the discovery could illuminate a previously unknown chapter of human evolutionary history, scientists say that more information surrounding Pink and his people is fleeting. While it appears they inhabited the land almost two million years ago, it seems as if the culture disappeared as suddenly as it materialized.
According to separate studies, Pink's culture may have been eradicated about 1.1 million years ago due to a significant shift in the climate. Still, researchers are hopeful that further exploration of the territory will yield previously unknown facts about hominin people. "Evidence for different hominin populations in Western Europe during the Early Pleistocene suggests that this region was a key point in the evolutionary history of the genus Homo,' paleontologist and study co-director Eudald Carbonell said.
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