Homo Heidelbergensis may be the common ancestor of Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens.
A new study reveals that the mysterious skull found in the Petralona Cave in Greece is 300,000 years old – and was neither human nor Neanderthal. It would probably be a Man Heidelbergensis.
An international team of investigators dated in about 300,000 years the enigmatic skull found in the Petralona Cave in Greece.
The skull, with a stalagmite growing from the interior, was not even Homo nor Neanderthal sapiens, the authors of the, recently published in Journal of Human Evolution.
The fossil was discovered in 1960, attached to the wall of the Petralona cave in northern Greece. Since then, scientists have debated their position in the human evolutionary tree and faced difficulties in determining your age – until now.
In the new study, the researchers dated calcitis, a common calcium carbonate mineral in caves, which was housed in the skull, having determined that it would have At least 277,000 years.
It is not known exactly how long the skull has been in the cave before it starts to cover itself, but this new estimate helps to restrict previous attempts at dating, which ranged from 170 thousand and 700 thousand years.
The conclusions reinforce previous hypotheses that individual had lived in Europe of the Pleistocenic, simultaneously with the Neanderthals, but belonged to a different human group, designated Homo heidelbergensis.
Petralone’s fossil is distinct from both homo sapiens and neanderthals, Chris Stringerpaleoantropologist of the natural History Museum of London and co -author of the study, to.
“The new estimate of age supports the persistence and coexistence of this population in parallel with the Neanderthal line evolution in the European Pleistocenic Middle ”.
The Petralone skull, sometimes called “Petralona man”It was almost certainly male, based on fossil’s size and robustness, explains Stringer. teeth had moderate wearwhich indicates that it has belonged to a young adult.
The skull found in the petralone cave has an inlaid stalagmite
Stringer says there is evidence that the skull was attached to the wall by calcitis incrusation – The same kind of those who projected themselves from the fossil itself. To estimate the age of these incrusation, the researchers used the method of Uranium series dating.
Calcitis contains small amounts of uranium, which decomposes into another radioactive element, the thorium, at a constant rhythm. This fixed decomposition rate allows you to calculate ages based on the proportion between uranium and thorium. The Calcitis of the Skull Draw about 286 thousand yearswith a high degree of confidence that it is at least 277 thousand years old.
The investigation also suggests that calcitis has grown quite rapidly in the cave. According to Stringer, It will not take too long Until the skull acquired its first layer of calcitis, which points to an age around 300 thousand years. However, The fossil may be even olderif the calcitis formation process was longer.
