Million year old human tooth found

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Last Friday, Spanish researchers unearthed a human tooth more than on emillion years old, making it perhaps the oldest human fossil remains ever discovered in Western Europe.

Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro, co-director of research at the Atapuerca site said the molar, discovered on Wednesday in the Atapuerca Sierra in the northern province of Burgos, could be as much as 1.2 million years old.

"The tooth represents the oldest human fossil remain of western Europe. Now we finally have the anatomical evidence of the hominids that fabricated tools more than one million years ago," the Atapuerca Foundation said in a statement. "Since it is an isolated fossil remain, it is not possible at this point to confirm which Homo species this tooth belongs to," the foundation added, but said first analyses "allow us to suppose it is an ancestor of Homo antecessor."

Several Homo Antecessor fossils were uncovered in 1994 in the near by Gran Dolina site, suggesting humans existed there more than 800,000 years ago, whareas scientists previously believed that the continent was inhabited by humans for about 500,000 years.

Many other findings across Spain seemed to back up the eirlier date.

Researchers said studies of the geological level suggested it was more than one million years old, but that final results were being awaited prior to "publishing this extraordinary finding in a research journal of the highest scientific prestige."

Bermudez de Castro, one of three paleontologists leading the expedition, said the fossil appeared to be "well worn" and from an individual aged between 20-25.

"For the time being we have no idea what species but there is no doubt, from the (geological) level where the tooth was found, that it belonged to the oldest European found to date."

Excavations in recent years in the Sierra Atapuerca have uncovered human remains ranging from early humans through the Bronze Age to modern man.

Atapuerca's most famous site is "Sima de los Huesos" (pit of bones) and fossils found there date from at least 350,000 years ago.