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<\/p>\nA fossilized skull fragment of Homo sp. unearthed in central Spain offers paleoanthropologists a fresh window into the story of ancient humans who lived in Europe hundreds of thousands of years ago.<\/p>\n
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A Homo heidelbergensis, a Neanderthal and a Cro-Magnon. Image credit: SINC \/ Jos\u00e9 Antonio Pe\u00f1as.<\/p>\n
The fossil is a fragment of a parietal bone<\/a> \u2014 one of the bones that form the sides and top of the skull.<\/p>\n The specimen was found embedded in rock breccia during excavations at the Middle Pleistocene locality of Ruidera within the Ruidera Lakes Natural Park in the Castilla-La Mancha region.<\/p>\n Labeled RVH-1, it represents the first human fossil ever recovered from the site.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was an incredible and fortunate surprise,\u201d said Dr. Mario Modesto-Mata, a paleoanthropologist at the Centro Nacional de Investigaci\u00f3n sobre la Evoluci\u00f3n Humana (CENIEH) and the International University of La Rioja.<\/p>\n \u201cWe went through a range of emotions, from initial skepticism and disbelief to immense joy once it was confirmed that it could only be human.\u201d<\/p>\n Using a combination of uranium-series dating and optically stimulated luminescence, the researchers estimated the fossil-bearing layer to be up to 224,000 years old.<\/p>\n \u201cThis fossil is only the tip of the iceberg,\u201d added Dr. Sara D\u00edaz P\u00e9rez, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wroc\u0142aw.<\/p>\n \u201cRuidera still has much to reveal about human evolution in Europe, and we are convinced that it will continue to yield discoveries of major scientific importance.\u201d<\/p>\n Anatomically, RVH-1 stands out for its relative thickness and its pronounced angle at the temporal line, a ridge on the side of the skull.<\/p>\n Both measurements place the fossil toward the upper end of the range seen in other Middle Pleistocene human fossils from Europe.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a thick cranial structure, similar to the morphology seen in other crania also regarded as archaic, such as the Ceprano specimen in Italy and the fossils from Caune de l\u2019Arago in the French Pyrenees,\u201d said Dr. Daniel Garc\u00eda Mart\u00ednez, a paleoanthropologist at the Complutense University of Madrid.<\/p>\n \u201cThe unusual anatomy of RVH-1 indicates that hominin populations \u2014 the group of primates that includes modern humans and their closest fossil relatives \u2014 with unexpected characteristics were still living in the Iberian Peninsula at that time.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThese traits had been inherited from ancestral lineages and persisted until relatively late in the Middle Pleistocene.\u201d<\/p>\n The scientists caution against drawing sweeping conclusions from a single, partial bone.<\/p>\n Rather than assigning the specimen to a specific species, they opted to classify it simply as Homo sp., while noting its morphological similarities to what is often labeled Homo heidelbergensis<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe discovery reinforces the idea that human evolution in Europe was not a linear process, but rather a complex scenario in which different populations with distinct evolutionary histories coexisted,\u201d said Dr. Carlos Palancar, a paleoanthropologist at the National Museum of Natural Sciences.<\/p>\n \u201cIt provides information about the populations that inhabited the interior of the Iberian Peninsula during this period and places Ruidera in a privileged position on the European map for the study of human evolution during the Middle Pleistocene,\u201d Dr. Garc\u00eda Mart\u00ednez said.<\/p>\n