He Older human facial fragment in Western Europe discovered in the Sierra de Atapuerca (Burgos) in 2022 and presented last week was a historical finding that came “against all forecast.” After two years of research, the fossil has been dated between 1.1 and 1.4 million years and has been provisionally attributed to a possible new human species that researchers have called Homo affinis erectusthat is in time between the Homo erectus of two million years ago and the Homo antecessor 860,000 years.
This rest, cataloged as ATE7-1 -but baptized by the research team as’Pink‘- It was found during the 2022 excavation campaign at the TE7 level of the elephant’s chasm. This site was already witnessed in 2007 of the discovery of a jaw that at that time was not clearly attributed to a concrete human species and was appointed Homo sp. The researchers dated him from 1.2 million years ago, but with the information at that time they were not able to classify the rest, found at level nine, such as Homo antecessor.
Now He has gone “a little further” Thanks to the finding of ‘Pink’ at level seven, that is, about two and a half meters below the jaw, called ATE9-1. As recognized by Dr. María Martiñón-Torres, director of the National Center for Research on Human Evolution (CENIEH) and one of the main researchers of the Atapuerca Research Project, the discovery came “against all forecast” because the site of the elephant’s chasm, unlike the Great Dolina-where in 1997 the story was also rewritten when the human remains were until then old “Cavity” that, over the years, “has been filled with things that have fallen from abroad and in which, until now, basically, there were many birds”.
As Martiñón-Torres exposes 20 minutes“We are talking about A period of very little demographic density. That is, the probability of finding one of the few who would have inhabited Europe is already very difficult. But, in addition, the site of the elephant’s chasm is a site that has been excavating decades and is not like the great dolina, which is a cannibalism camp, a place they used to process, decrease and break animals and humans. So the probability of finding things may be greater. ”
Instead, the elephant’s chasm is a site that was not a camp but a cavity in which there was, above all, “birds and eagles, because there were probably the nests of these birds nearby.” Therefore, researchers excavate “things that were dragged and fallen from outside.”
Therefore, the chances of one of the few humans that could be in Europe taking a walk [hace entre 1,1 y 1,4 millones de años] It would have fallen inside that hole, which is not a room or subsistence place, or a camp, they were scarce, according to the scientist.
“We are talking about an individual who was perhaps dead, out of the cavity and whose bones, at a given time, by drags” fell into the cavity where the site of the elephant’s chasm is located, which “was not a cave that was inhabited by hominids.”
It is, in short, a place that He did not have great evidence of intense human activity. But, as Martiñón-Torres says proud, in Atapuerca “Nothing is left to chance” And, after “many years excavating a site that gave, above all, fauna -turtles, turtles and things related to a humid atmosphere -but human, few,” the prize “has occurred: the oldest human face until the known moment of Western Europe.
“I always say that This site, maybe, in the hands of another team, would have been abandonedespecially when you had other sites so rich in human materials in Atapuerca. But in Atapuerca, nothing is left to chance, it was known that it was one of the deposits that had ancient evidence, it was where we had the oldest levels, and it has always been said ‘here all this is exhausted, here nothing is left to luck, we have very old levels and excavate until the end’. And look, the prize comes. Because although it did not seem to be a very rich site, look at what he has given us, “he ends.
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