Several fossils found in 1994 at La Gran Dolina (Atapuerca, Burgos, Spain) open the door to a new species, the Homo Antecessor.

La Gran Dolina (Sima de los Huesos) is located close to a village, near Burgos (Spain). That’s the place were the remains of some people (now classified as Homo antecessor) were found. They have been dated closer to 800,000 years old, so we could say they are the oldest hominid species in Europe, although there is still some controversy about this. The Homo antecessor lived in forests, and according to old instruments found, it seems it was a hunter but, on the other side, some signals of cannibalism were found when analysing some remains of bones.

There are several reasons or arguments the discoverers of this new species offer to make us understand why these remains cannot be considered under any other different species. For example, their facial morphology is very similar to the one present in Homo sapiens (in Europe, some 40,000 years ago), and the encephalic capacity was calculated in around 1,000 cm3. But, on the other side they found other typical characteristics belonging to Homo heidelbergensis (500,000 to 400,00 years). From this data, together with other differential characteristics, the discoverers of the rests assumed they had discovered a new species and named it Homo Antecessor (“The Explorer” or “Human forbear”, according to different sources).

In fact, before these discoveries, the Homo ergaster (in Africa) was considered as the ancestor of three different “homos”: Homo erectus (in Asia), Homo heidelbergensis (in Europe) and Homo Sapiens (in Africa). But now we have a new theory, created from the excavations in Atapuerca: the real ancestor was not the Homo ergaster, but the Homo Antecessor. So, according to this, the Homo antecessor is considered the common ancestor for both, modern humans and Neanderthals. The Atapuerca scientists published this discovery in 1997 (Science Magazine).

This entire story started when the fossils of a boy aged 10-12 years old (among others) was found at La Gran Dolina, at the Atapuerca investigation fields. “El niño de la Gran Dolina” (“The boy from La Gran Dolina”) is the only one that still preserves a quite big piece of his cranium. His facial characteristics are very similar to ours (plane) but on the other hand his forehead shares a lot of features with Homo ergaster, for example, pronounced eyebrows osseous structure. So, here’s the link between both species, although not all scientists think so. Some of them assure the characteristics found when the cranium was studied are not decisive, as it was just a boy, so his face has juvenile characteristics that probably will change when adult.

For more information, visit Atapuerca, A World Heritage Site.