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What is the name of the site in Spain that dates to 430 thousand years ago and has produced more hominin fossils?
The fossil remains found in Sima de los Huesos, Spain, offer important clues to unravelling the origins of our species (see main story).
What is significant about the archaeological site Sima de los Huesos?
“Sima de los Huesos is currently the only non-permafrost site that allow us to study DNA sequences from the Middle Pleistocene, the time period preceding 125,000 years ago”, says Matthias Meyer of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, lead author of an article that was published in Nature today.
Did humans exist 1 million years ago?
The first humans emerged in Africa around two million years ago, long before the modern humans known as Homo sapiens appeared on the same continent. There’s a lot anthropologists still don’t know about how different groups of humans interacted and mated with each other over this long stretch of prehistory.
How many years of human habitation are represented by the Atapuerca site?
The caves of the Sierra de Atapuerca contain a rich fossil record of the earliest human beings in Europe, from nearly one million years ago and extending up to the Common Era.
How was Zhoukoudian found?
The Peking Man Site was first discovered by Johan Gunnar Andersson in 1921, and was first excavated by Otto Zdansky in 1921 and 1923, unearthing two human teeth….Zhoukoudian.
| UNESCO World Heritage Site | |
|---|---|
| Zhoukoudian Entrance | |
| Official name | Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian |
| Location | Zhoukoudian Town, Fangshan District, Beijing, China |
How old is the oldest hominid fossil found in Europe?
The researchers said the fossil found at an archaeological site on 30 June in the Atapuerca mountain range was about 1.4m years old. Until now, the oldest hominid fossil found in Europe was a jawbone found at the same site in 2007 which was determined to be 1.2m years old.
What is the archaeological site of Atapuerca?
The archaeological site of Atapuerca is located on the Atapuerca Mountains in the north of Spain. The archaeological significance of the area became increasingly apparent during the construction of a railway line as deep trenches were cut through the rocks and sediments of the Gran Dolina site, the Galería Elefante and at Sima de los Huesos.
What happened to the Atapuerca fossils?
In 1994, archaeologists digging in the Atapuerca Mountains in northern Spain discovered the fossilized remains of an archaic group of humans unlike any other ever seen. The bones were cut and fractured, and appeared to have been cannibalized.
How old are the Atapuerca stones?
In July 2020 two quartzite stones were discovered, dating to 600,000 years ago, a find which filled in a gap in the evidence for human occupation of the site over a timeline of 1,200,000 years. The site was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, under the name, Archaeological Site of Atapuerca.