The prehistoric skull found merged for the wall cave may have belonged to a mysterious ancient hominid

In 1960, a villager found something terribly frightening in the Petralona cave in Greece – a humanoid skull with a protruding on the forehead, merged on the wall of the cave. Since then, the researchers have tried to go out with the strange specimen and to understand how it has achieved it, but these efforts so far have only given only a frustrating age group between 170,000 and 700,000 years.

The ambiguous stratigraphic position of the skull is also far from useful. A team of researchers therefore adopted a slightly different approach, dating from the unicorn type calcite projection of the skull. In turn, they reduced the potential age of the sample and potentially light up a mysterious ancient hominid.

The study was published last month in the Journal of Human Evolution.

A mysterious species

“I saw the skull 1971 for the first time, when I went for a tour of Europe for my doctoral trip, “a anthropologist at the University College in London and co-author of the study told Gizmodo.

“”Then it was said to be a Man alert Or a Neanderthal, and for me, it was neither. It was therefore the beginning of my idea that there was another type of human in Europe. »»

Stringer and his team played The dating of the U series – a technique of dating geological formations based on the radioactive decrease of certain forms of uranium atoms – on the growth of the calcite of the skull. Calcite is a common mineral which is often formed in stalactites and stalagmites in caves like calcium in the water flowing in the walls of the cave reacts with carbon dioxide. In fact, calcite on the skull of Petralona is a stalagmite. Using this approach, researchers concluded that the skull is at least 290,000 years old.

However, how close it is to the real age of the skull depends on the duration of the duration “Lying before this layer of calcite is formed there, ”said Stringer. He theorizes that calcite probably started to train shortly after the appearance of the skull in the cave: “IF it’s true, so the date we have is a good date for the fossil, ”said Stringer.

Better still would be date with the skull directly– For example, via a tooth sample. But it is something that the University of Aristotle de Thessaloniki, where the skull is stored at the Museum of Geology, Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, should first agree.

A Neanderthal neighbor

Morphologically, the team agrees with the hypothesis that the skull of Petralona belonged to a member of a separate group and much more primitive than the two Homo sapiens and the Neanderthals. Their new minimum estimate of age strengthens the theory according to which this mysterious ancient group was at least contemporary for the Neanderthals in the latest of the Middle Pleistocene, there are approximately 430,000 to 385,000 years.

“My opinion is, and it has been since 1981 that there is this group of humans in Africa, Europe, probably in Asia too. And the first specimen named in this group was the jaw of Germany, found in 1907, and which was appointed in 1908 as Heidelbergensis manA new species, because it was found near Heidelberg, “explained Stranger.” And I took the name of this species for the skull of PetrCalona, ​​and I said, it is probably the species Heidelbergensis. “”

Strnger’s hypothesis aligns with other research highlighting the similarities between the skull of Petralona and the Kabwe skull of Zambia, a fossil which dates back to around 300,000 years and could also be the remains of a H. Heidelbergensis.

Although Stranger previously applied that this species was probably a common ancestor of Homo sapiens And the Neanderthals, he has changed his opinion somewhat: “I would say that Heidelbergensis is now a distinct branch coexisting with Sapiens and the Neanderthals, which dates back a long way, probably more than a million years, “he said.