They find in Atapuerca a human fossil that is part of “the face of the first European”

The Research Team of the excavations in the Sierra de Atapuerca has presented this Friday one of the main findings of recent years, a new human fossil found in the Sima del Elefante, and that due to its antiquity reveals what “the face of the first European” is like.

The Minister of Culture of the Junta de Castilla y León, Gonzalo Santonja, has participated in the presentation of these findingstogether with the co-directors of the Project, Juan Luis Arsuaga, José María Bermúdez de Castro and Eudald Carbonell, and the researcher and coordinator of the Sima del Elefante site, Rosa Huguet.

As confirmed, it is the partial face of a humanwhose age may be around 1.4 million years.

As you have recalled, for a couple of decades, and thanks to the Finds in the Gran Dolin cavea, members of the scientific community debated the most coherent evolutionary model to explain the origin of the modern face.

Homo antecessor, whose antiquity has been encrypted in 850,000 years, features the oldest modern face recorded to date in human history. However, thanks to this new finding in Atapuerca, progress can be made in responding to the origin of a face similar to ours.

They argue that one of the objectives of this excavation campaign was to continue the work on the upper part of the Sima del Elefante, which began in 2021.

The importance of intervening in this area lies in its position, close to one of the main entrances of the cavity, since the levels previously excavated in this site have shown that in this area the diversity and abundance of recovered remains has always been higher than in the rest of the site. It was one of the members of the investigation team, Edgar Téllez, who found on June 30 in sector K29 of the Sima del Elefante, different bone remains wrapped in clay.

After cleaning them and being analyzed by several team specialists, they have been able to confirm that these remains corresponded to a human jaw. The human fossil from the Sima del Elefante has been found approximately two meters below the mandible obtained in 2007, and which was assigned to Homo sp, an indeterminate species due to lack of conclusive data.

That is why they explain that it is very likely that the new fossil is related to that jaw and that belongs to one of the first populations that colonized Europe. “If so, we will finally be able to determine the identity of the human species from the Sima del Elefante. In addition, we will be able to make a detailed comparison between the new face found in the Sima del Elefante with that of Homo antecessor and delve into the origin of the species.” appointed 25 years ago”, they confirm.

At the moment, geological samples are already being obtained to estimate the age of this fossil, which will be processed at the National Center for Research on Human Evolution (CENIEH) in Burgos.

Likewise, several pieces of lithic industry and faunal remains with evidence of consumption by humans associated with this finding at the Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES) of Tarragona.

The determination of the fossil species of vertebrates obtained at this level will give a very accurate picture of the conditions and the ecosystem in which the first settlers of Europe lived.