Part of the earliest known human face found in western Europe

In a study, Spanish scientists reported the oldest known human facial skeleton found in western Europe, which dates back to about 1.4 million to 1.1 million years ago. Relevant research was published in "Nature" on March 13.The scientific community generally believes that humans first settled in Eurasia at least 1.8 million years ago. But the evidence of early hominin settlement in western Europe is very limited, limited to some extremely scattered fossil samples on the Iberian Peninsula, which provide almost no clues about the appearance and classification of these hominins.

Fossils from a Spanish site dating back about 850,000 years have been identified as belonging to Homo sapiens, an early hominin species with an elongated mid-face similar to modern humans. In 2007, a 1.2 to 1.1 million-year-old hominin mandible (named ATE9-1) was discovered at the Sima del Elefante site in northern Spain, but it was not possible to determine whether it belonged to a pioneer human.

In 2022, Rosa Huguet of the Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution of Catalonia, Spain, and colleagues discovered the fossil of a partial midfacial skeleton of a hominin at the Sima del Elefante site. The fragments (collectively designated ATE7-1) include most of the maxillary and zygomatic bones of an adult individual's left face. Researchers used physical evidence and 3D imaging to reconstruct the fragments, estimating their age to be between 1.4 million and 1.1 million years old.

The age of these newly discovered fossils is indistinguishable from the mandible (ATE9-1) previously found at the same site, but the ATE7-1 fossil was found 2 meters deeper than ATE9-1, so the researchers assumed that these new fossils are older. They believe that more archaeological remains (stone tools and animal bones with cut marks) and paleoecological traces discovered from the site have brought new insights into the living environment and lifestyle of this hominin.

The researchers observed that these hominin bone fragments did not exhibit the "modern" midfacial features seen in the precursor fossils. Additionally, although these remains bear some resemblance to Homo erectus, they cannot be confirmed to belong to this group. Therefore, they tentatively attribute these fossils to species closely related to Homo erectus, indicating their genetic relationship with Homo erectus, but further proof is needed. This discovery may mean that at least two hominin species lived in western Europe during the Early Pleistocene: Homo erectus relatives and later pioneer Homo. However, further research and fossil samples are needed to investigate the relationships between these groups and further refine their classification.