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850,000-Year-Old Remains of Archaic Human Unearthed at Atapuerca, Spain
Recent excavations at the famed archaeological site of Atapuerca (Sierra de Atapuerca) in northern Spain’s Burgos province unearthed the skeletal remains of an individual who belonged to an archaic human species known as Homo antecessor. This species walked the earth between 1.2 million and 800,000 years ago, and is the oldest hominin found in the fossil records of Western Europe.
The Earliest European Hominin
Homo antecessor, which means “pioneer man” in Latin, was first discovered in the Gran Dolina cavern at Atapuerca in 1994, or 30 years before the most recent find. It was identified as a distinct species in 1997, and for a time was considered to be the last common ancestor shared by modern humans and Neanderthals. More recent research has suggested this is not true, however, and the current scientific consensus is that Homo antecessor was an offshoot of the modern human evolutionary line that developed just before humans and Neanderthal’s split.
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