A fragment of a face of a human ancestor is the oldest in Western EuropeAccording to the results of a new study published this week.
The incomplete skull – part of the left cheekbot and the upper jaw – was found in the north of Spain in 2022 and published in the Journal Nature On Wednesday.
Archaeologists believe The fossil is between 1.1 million and 1.4 million years old.
Researchers hope that the discovery will offer some new insights about the first inhabitants of Western Europe during the early Pleistocene era. Much of the available information from West -Europe is limited to the Iberian Peninsula.
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This photo of the Catalan Institute for Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution in March 2025 shows archaeological excavation work on the Sima del Elefante site in Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos, Spain, where a fossil of a hominin between 1.1 million and 1.4 million years old was found. (Maria D. Guillé/Iphes-Cerca via AP)
Although a collection of older fossils from early human ancestors was previously found in the country of Georgia, the Spanish fossil is the first proof that clearly demonstrates that human ancestors “took excursions in Europe in that time,” said Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian Human Origins program, the Associated Press.
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Yet there is no evidence that the earliest arrivals remained there for a long time, said Potts, and noted that they dared to other locations and then extinct.
This image of the Catalan Institute for Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution in March 2025 shows a fossil of the left middle surface of a hominin, right, between 1.1 million and 1.4 million years old, recovered from the Sima del Elefante -Site in Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain and SPAIN. (Maria D. Guill’s/Iphes-Cerca, Elena Santos/Cenieh via AP)
The partial skull bears similarities with Homo Erectus, but there are also some anatomical differences, said research coo author Rosa Huguet, an archaeologist at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution in Tarragona, Spain.
This photo supplied by the Catalan Institute for Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution in March 2025, Dr. Rosa Huguet, a researcher at Iphes-Cerca and Professor at Rovira I Virgili University, with the fossil of a hominin between 1.1 million and 1.4 million years old, found on an Archic site in Spain. (Maria D. Guillé/Iphes-Cerca via AP)
Homo Erectus arose about 2 million years ago and moved from Africa to regions of Asia and Europe, with the last individuals who die out about 100,000 years ago, Potts said.
This image of the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution In March 2025, a fossil of the left middle surface of a hominin between 1.1 million and 1.4 million years old won from the Sima del Elefante site in Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos, Spain. (Maria D. Guillé/Iphes-Cerca via AP)
It can be a challenge to identify which group of early people a fossil find belongs if there is only one fragment to many bones that show a series of functions, said the University of Zurich Paleoantropologist Christoph Zollikofer, who was not involved in the study.
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The same cave complex in the Spanish Atapuerca Mountains where the new fossil was found, previously also yielded other important instructions to the old human past. Researchers who work in the region have also found more recent fossils from Neanderthals and early homo sapiens.
The Associated Press has contributed to this report.
