{"id":120201,"date":"2025-09-05T06:57:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T06:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/120201\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T06:57:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T06:57:08","slug":"new-dating-of-greeces-petralona-skull-redefines-europes-human-story-the-greek-herald","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/120201\/","title":{"rendered":"New dating of Greece\u2019s Petralona skull redefines Europe\u2019s human story \u2013 The Greek Herald"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A fresh analysis has brought new clarity to one of Europe\u2019s most debated fossils, the Petralona cranium, unearthed over sixty years ago in a cave in <a href=\"https:\/\/greekherald.com.au\/news\/wwii-plane-missing-in-northern-greece-discovered-after-70-years\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">northern Greece<\/a>, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/archaeology\/article-866012\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">jpost.com<\/a>. Long shrouded in uncertainty, its age has now been determined with greater precision, offering key insights into our evolutionary past.<\/p>\n<p>An international team from France, China, the UK, and Greece applied advanced uranium-series dating to calcite on the fossil. Their results, published in the Journal of Human Evolution, confirm the skull is at least 286,000 years old, firmly placing it in the Middle Pleistocene. Previous estimates had ranged wildly, from 170,000 to nearly 700,000 years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis fossil has always been central to discussions of European prehistory,\u201d explained lead author Christophe Falgu\u00e8res of the Institut de Pal\u00e9ontologie Humaine. \u201cFor the first time, we have a reliable minimum age that allows us to place Petralona in its proper evolutionary context.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The skull is remarkably complete, yet distinct from both Neanderthals and modern humans. Many specialists classify it as Homo heidelbergensis, considered a likely ancestor of both lineages. The new timeline strengthens arguments that Petralona may represent a more archaic group living alongside early Neanderthals.<\/p>\n<p>The study also overturns old assumptions about its discovery. For decades, researchers thought the cranium had been fixed to a cave wall. New evidence shows the calcite on the skull is younger than the surrounding rock, suggesting it may have been moved before being sealed in stone.<\/p>\n<p>These findings reshape our view of southeastern Europe\u2019s prehistory, pointing to archaic humans persisting in the region around 300,000 years ago. \u201cThe Petralona cranium reminds us that Europe\u2019s human story is not a straight line,\u201d said Chris Stringer of London\u2019s Natural History Museum. \u201cIt\u2019s a branching, complex history, with different populations existing side by side.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/archaeology\/article-866012\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">jpost.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A fresh analysis has brought new clarity to one of Europe\u2019s most debated fossils, the Petralona cranium, unearthed&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[64,63,84984,128],"class_list":["post-120201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-greek-news","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}