Paleomagnetics

Admin | January 01, 2012 | Comments Off

Paleomagnetics

Paleomagnetics

On Wednesday, 27 June 2007, in a cave unearthed along the path of a narrow gauge mining railroad cut into the ancient rock of the Sierra de Atapuerca during its construction a century ago, a human tooth was found. It is the oldest human fossil remain ever discovered in western Europe, and is thought to be between 1-1.2 million years old based on the geological strata in which it was found at the Sima del Elefante site east of Burgos, Spain.

Stone-age Tools and Human Fossils Linked

The molar at one time belonged to an individual of an as-yet undetermined species of hominid, probably an ancestor of Homo antecessor, who was 20-25 years old when he or she died. José María Bermúdez de Castro, co-director of the extensive digs that are being conducted in the caves of the Atapuerca, said in a news release Friday that, “We finally have the anatomical evidence of the hominids that fabricated tools more than one million years ago”. Stone tools from three different epochs of tool-making have been found in the caves, the most complete series of them at the Gran Dolina site, but no hominid remains had been found with the most ancient of these until Wednesday’s discovery.