Million Year Old Tooth Found In Spain

Spanish researchers on Friday said they had unearthed a human tooth more than one million years old, which they estimated to be the oldest human fossil remain 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.

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.


SOURCE:
news.Yahoo.com

A very interesting and cool archaeological find.

It may not seem like a big deal, but it's finds like these that build up to give us a
bigger picture of our Evolutionary history.

The age of the individual struck me to, since from my understanding it would have
been in the latter part of its mid-life (age expectancy was really low for early Humans),
and it popped into my mind, maybe this individual died from an activity springing from
during its Mid-Life crisis.


Comments, Opinions?

Actually if that find was true then thats massive IMO.

Great post

How do they know its even human?
And why does it have anything to do with tools?

Originally posted by iori_komei


A very interesting and cool archaeological find.

It may not seem like a big deal, but it's finds like these that build up to give us a
bigger picture of our Evolutionary history.

The age of the individual struck me to, since from my understanding it would have
been in the latter part of its mid-life (age expectancy was really low for early Humans),
and it popped into my mind, maybe this individual died from an activity springing from
during its Mid-Life crisis.

Comments, Opinions?

he probably died during dinner
Homo Antecessor were cannibals
yum


[edit on 30-6-2007 by Marduk]

Originally posted by merka
How do they know its even human?

A very good question. It turns out that teeth are unique to a lot of species, and some animals can be identified from a single tooth. Tyrannosaurus Rex is one of those.

If you look above, the single long root and the pattern of the crown (the flattened part of the tooth) is actually unique to humans and is not present in the apes. The pattern of the "valley" forms a "Y" shape in humans, but not in any other species.

Pretty cool, huh?

And why does it have anything to do with tools?

They found stone tools in the region that they've dated to about 1 million years. This may represent homo erectus or homo heidelbergensis rather than homo sapiens.

A good review of hominids is here:
www.uiowa.edu...