Homo antecessor

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Homo antecessor
Replica of the remains of a skull

Replica of the remains of a skull

Temporal occurrence
Pleistocene
0.9 million years
Locations
Systematics
Human (Hominoidea)
Apes (Hominidae)
Homininae
Hominini
homo
Homo antecessor
Scientific name
Homo antecessor
Bermudez de Castro et al., 1997

As Homo antecessor be fossils of the genus Homo which have in the northern Spain in the archaeological site of Gran Dolina in up to 900,000-year-old find layers from the Pleistocene were discovered. According to their discoverers, the facial bones of the finds show relatively "modern" features, while the tooth crowns and tooth roots still show "primitive" features, which was not observed in this combination in Homo heidelbergensis , which is almost the same age .

The classification of Homo antecessor as an independent species and the relationship to other species of the genus Homo is controversial.

Naming

The name of the genus Homo is derived from the Latin hŏmō [ ˈhɔmoː ] "man". The epithet antecessor also comes from Latin and roughly means forerunners, discoverers, pioneers, early settlers . Homo antecessor thus means something like "forerunner of the anatomically modern man ".

Initial description

In the first description, the holotype was defined as the fragment of a right lower jaw with molars M1, M2 and M3 (archive number ATD6-5), the upper jaw fragment ATD6-13 and another 12 teeth assigned to the same individual. Due to certain features of the teeth (including premolars with several roots) and the fragments of several facial skulls found (modern looking face, but "primitive" jaws and bulges above the eyes ), Homo ergaster was considered to be the ancestor of the Gran Dolina finds .

At the same time, the Spanish researchers decided to interpret their findings as a new chronospecies - which is controversial among experts : The European Homo antecessor developed from the African Homo ergaster and from this Homo heidelbergensis . However, numerous other paleoanthropologists arrange the Asian hominid fossils of Altpleistozäns (approximately 1.8 to 0.8 million years ago) with the similarly ancient finds from Africa and Europe to the Homo erectus too, so - this reading According - to Homo erectus from Coming from Africa, it also expanded into Europe and developed into Homo heidelbergensis here ; From this point of view, the Spanish fossils therefore belong to a local group of Homo erectus .

Site and first finds

The Sierra de Atapuerca , 14 km east of Burgos , is a karst landscape in whose Cretaceous dolomite numerous caves were formed. These caves were later gradually filled with Pleistocene debris and have long been known to have fossilized bones found in them. In 1976 the Spanish paleontologist Trinidad Torres discovered the first fossil of a member of the genus Homo while searching for fossil bear bones . The karst hills of Atapuerca quickly emerged as the world's most important depository for fossils from the Middle Pleistocene and were initially dated between 780,000 and 125,000 years ago. From one of these caves alone, the Sima de los Huesos ("bone pit"), more than 1,300 fossils had been recovered by 1993 that could be assigned to the genus Homo .

In the vicinity of the Sima de los Huesos , several caves were cut in around 1900 during the construction of a now disused mining railway line, which had also been dug since 1978. In 1990, stone tools were discovered by Juan Luis Arsuaga in one of these caves - called Gran Dolina ("Great Doline ") - in layers whose age was dated to almost a million years. This contradicted the previously valid assumption that Europe was only colonized by homosexuals 500,000 years ago .

In 1993, under the direction of Eudald Carbonell , the Gran Dolina cave began to systematically remove a six square meter, 18 meter thick deposit. In July 1994, in the layer known as TD6 – T36–43, attributable bone fragments and teeth as well as around 100 stone tools came to light of the genus Homo . Based on the accompanying finds (including various species of rodents ), the shape of the stone tools and paleomagnetic measurements, the fossils of the TD6 layer were initially estimated to be at least 780,000 years old, as this layer was below the Matuyama - Brunhes limit, which can be dated to this age ( also: Brunhes-Matuyama magnetic reversal). At the same time, the discoverers pointed out that they had not assigned the finds to any of the established species of the genus Homo . They explained that one could regard the fossils as “a primitive form of Homo heidelbergensis ”, but it is possible that a new species will also be named if further finds make this seem appropriate.

Reconstruction of a Homo antecessor skull from bone fragments in the Museu d'Arqueologia de Catalunya in Barcelona

In fact, the first description of a new species, Homo antecessor , was published in the journal Science in May 1997 . In it, the meanwhile almost 80 - mostly quite small - finds of at least six individuals were referred to as the remains of the "possibly last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans " and now - significantly different from the original dating - to an age of "approximately 650,000 years " estimated.

The finds are kept in the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid and in an archaeological collection in Burgos .

More finds

In March 2008, a lower jaw was presented in Nature (archive number ATE9-1), which had been recovered from the Sima del Elefante in June 2007 and was also - but expressly "provisionally" - attributed to Homo antecessor . This find has been dated to an age of 1.2 to 1.1 million years and, if the dating is correct, would be the oldest find of individuals of the hominini in Europe. In 2011 the assignment to Homo antecessor was revoked and the fossil was more cautious than Homo spec. expressly not assigned to a specific type; the age was now given as 1.3 million years.

It is possible that fossil finds from a quarry near Ternifine (Tighenif) near Muaskar , Algeria can be assigned to Homo antecessor : three lower jaws , a skull fragment and some teeth that were found there in 1954 by the French paleontologist Camille Arambourg . In the first publication, the finds were named Atlanthropus mauritanicus , while today they are mostly referred to as Homo erectus mauritanicus .

Similarly, old as as Homo antecessor is designated finds one as homo cepranensis designated cranium fragment in March 1994 in Italy was salvaged and Homo antecessor "possibly" near stands.

Close-up of the footprints
(with the lens cover of a camera as a size comparison)

Researchers working with Chris Stringer uncovered fossil footprints near Happisburgh in the east of England in May 2013 , which they dated to an age of 800,000 years and based on this age assigned homo antecessor , as this species is the only one described in Europe so far in that era.

Reconstruction by Élisabeth Daynès (from 2014), from the Museo de la Evolución Humana .

Dating

The dating of the finds turned out to be difficult because they were inconsistent. The minimum age was initially shown as 780,000 years, but in the first description from 1997 there was talk of "about 650,000 years", but in 1999 the original age of "at least 780,000 years" was used again. A 2008 review article dated the fossils to 780,000 to 500,000 years ago. A new dating in 2013 showed an age of around 900,000 years. In 2018, an age of at least 772,000 years (because it was below the Matuyama-Brunhes limit) and at the same time - by electron spin resonance - an age between 624,000 and 949,000 years, which summarized a date between at least 772,000 and a maximum of 949,000 years ago.

Evidence of cannibalism

The fossil bones from the Gran Dolina cave are mostly badly damaged and broken, and the hominine bones were apparently not filed in an orderly manner, because they were found mixed with the bones of various animal species and with stone tools. However, numerous bones - homine and non-hominine - show identical cut marks from chopping, cutting and scratching with stone tools. From this it was deduced that all bones treated in this way and the meat attached to them “served the same purpose, namely consumption. There is undoubtedly no evidence of any special or ritual treatment of the human remains. That said, there are solid arguments that hominids ate other hominids 790,000 years ago in Gran Doline . "

controversy

The classification of Homo antecessor as a separate species, which is mainly represented by Spanish paleoanthropologists , was controversial from the start - between so-called rags and splinters . As early as 1997, the French paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin from the Center national de la recherche scientifique in Science criticized the fact that the new species was primarily defined on the basis of the facial bones of a young person; the lower jaw fragment ATD6-96 presumably also came from a young woman. So few homo fossil finds from Europe are known from between 1.8 million and 500,000 years ago , argued other researchers - for example Philip Rightmire of the State University of New York - that a further gradation of species is not for that reason alone is expedient; In addition, there are hardly any youthful facial skulls known from other sites, so that comparisons with the ATD6-5 fossil are hardly possible.

Often the fossils assigned to Homo antecessor are assigned to Homo erectus or interpreted as earlier Homo heidelbergensis . Even Eudald Carbonell, the long-time excavation director in Atapuerca, admitted in 2008 that the lower jaw from the Sima del Elefante resembled both the younger Homo heidelbergensis and the Dmanisi fossils . According to his hypothesis, the Atapuerca fossils are descended from the Dmanisi people who are said to have spread to Spain; Speculation to the contrary suggests that the population described as Homo antecessor could be a candidate for the last common ancestor of the Dmanisi people and Homo heidelbergensis .

In a 2010 review on the origin of Homo sapiens , Jeffrey H. Schwartz and Ian Tattersall questioned the thesis that Homo antecessor was the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and humans, pointing out that the two younger species had too few anatomical features with the alleged ancestor species shared that this hypothesis was sufficiently plausible. At the same time they pointed out that the dentition of the lower jaw finds from Spain and Algeria show a very similar structure ("detailed similarities"). If both belong to the same species, the older name Atlanthropus mauritanicus would have priority; instead of Homo antecessor - according to today's conventions - the species name Homo mauritanicus or Homo erectus mauritanicus would have to be used. 2019, it was possible to extract proteins from a preserved recovered in the TD6-layer tooth and on the position of any conclusions Homo antecessor in the family tree of homo- close species; According to these analyzes, the fossils of Homo antecessor belong to a sister species of the last common ancestor of Homo sapiens , Neanderthals and Denisovans .

It is possible that the fossils known as Homo antecessor are evidence of an early colonization of the Atapuerca region by a population that later became extinct again.

literature

See also

Web links

Commons : Homo antecessor  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c José María Bermúdez de Castro , Juan Luis Arsuaga , Eudald Carbonell , Antonio Rosas, Iglesias Martínez and Marina Mosquera: A Hominid from the Lower Pleistocene of Atapuerca, Spain: Possible Ancestor to Neanderthals and Modern Humans. In: Science. Volume 276, No. 5317, 1997, pp. 1392-1395, doi: 10.1126 / science.276.5317.1392
  2. ^ Ann Gibbons: A New Face for Human Ancestors. In: Science. Volume 276, 1997, pp. 1331-1333, doi: 10.1126 / science.276.5317.1331
  3. ^ Ann Gibbons: Into the Pit of Human History. In: Science . Volume 276, 1997, p. 1332, doi: 10.1126 / science.276.5317.1332
  4. ↑ Juan Luis Arsuaga et al .: Three new human skulls from the Sima de los Huesos Middle Pleistocene site in Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain. In: Nature . Volume 362, 1993, pp. 534-537, doi: 10.1038 / 362534a0
  5. ↑ Michael Balter: In Search of the First Europeans. In: Science. Volume 291, No. 5509, 2001, pp. 1722-1725, doi: 10.1126 / science.291.5509.1722
  6. ↑ Eudald Carbonell et al .: Lower Pleistocene Hominids and Artifacts from Atapuerca-TD6 (Spain). In: Science. Volume 269, 1995, pp. 826-830, doi: 10.1126 / science.7638598
  7. ↑ JM Pares, A. Perez-Gonzalez: Paleomagnetic age for hominid fossils at Atapuerca archaeological site, Spain. In: Science. Volume 269, 1995, pp. 830-832, doi: 10.1126 / science.7638599
  8. ^ Eudald Carbonell et al .: The first hominin of Europe. In: Nature. Volume 452, 2008, pp. 465-469, doi: 10.1038 / nature06815
  9. ↑ JM Bermúdez de Castro et al .: Early Pleistocene human mandible from Sima del Elefante (TE) cave site in Sierra de Atapuerca (Spain): a comparative morphological study. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 61, No. 1, 2011, pp. 12-25, doi: 10.1016 / j.jhevol.2011.03.005
  10. ↑ Camille Arambourg : récentes découvertes de paléontologie humaine réalisées en Afrique du Nord française (L'Atlanthropus de Terni Fine - L'Hominien de Casablanca). In: Third Panafrican Congress on Prehistory. Livingstone 1955, Clark, JD et Cole, S., Eds., London, Chatto & Windus, 1957, pp. 186-194.
  11. ^ A b Bernard Wood , Nicholas Lonergan: The hominin fossil record: taxa, grades and clades. In: Journal of Anatomy . Volume 212, No. 4, 2008, p. 362, doi: 10.1111 / j.1469-7580.2008.00871.x , full text (PDF; 292 kB) ( Memento from October 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  12. ↑ Nick Ashton et al .: Hominin Footprints from Early Pleistocene Deposits at Happisburgh, UK. In: PLoS ONE. 9 (2), 2014, article e88329. doi: 10.1371 / journal.pone.0088329
  13. ↑ For example: G. Cuenca-Bescos, C. Laplana, JI Canudo: Biochronological implications of the Arvicolidae (Rodentia, Mammalia) from the Lower Pleistocene hominid-bearing level of Trinchera Dolina 6 (TD6, Atapuerca, Spain). In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 37, 1999, pp. 353-373; doi: 10.1006 / jhev.1999.0306
  14. ↑ Josep M. Parés et al .: Reassessing the age of Atapuerca-TD6 (Spain): new paleomagnetic results. In: Journal of Archaeological Science. Volume 40, No. 12, 2013, pp. 4586–4595, doi: 10.1016 / j.jas.2013.06.013
    Dating is refined for the Atapuerca site where Homo antecessor appeared. On: eurekalert.org of February 7, 2014.
  15. ↑ Mathieu Duval, Rainer Grün, Josep M. Parés, Laura Martín-Francés, Isidoro Campaña, Jordi Rosell, Qingfeng Shao, Juan Luis Arsuaga, Eudald Carbonell, and José María Bermúdez de Castro: The first direct ESR analysis of a hominin tooth from Atapuerca Gran Dolina TD-6 (Spain) supports the antiquity of Homo antecessor. In: Quaternary Geochronology. Online advance publication of May 7, 2018, doi: 10.1016 / j.quageo.2018.05.001
  16. ↑ Yolanda Fernández-Jalvo, J. Carlos Díez, Isabel Cáceres and Jordi Rosell: Human cannibalism in the Early Pleistocene of Europe (Gran Dolina, Atapuerca, Burgos, Spain). In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 37, No. 3-4, 1999, pp. 591-622, doi: 10.1006 / jhev.1999.0324
  17. ↑ Eudald Carbonell, Isabel Cáceres, Marina Lozano et al .: Cultural Cannibalism as a Paleoeconomic System in the European Lower Pleistocene. The Case of Level TD6 of Gran Dolina (Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos, Spain). In: Current Anthropology. Volume 51, No. 4, 2010, pp. 539-549, doi: 10.1086 / 653807
  18. ^ Ian Tattersall : Masters of the Planet. The Search for Our Human Origins. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2012, pp. 152-154, ISBN 978-0-230-10875-2
  19. ^ Ann Gibbons: A New Face for Human Ancestors. In: Science. Volume 276, No. 5317, 1997, p. 1331, doi: 10.1126 / science.276.5317.1331
  20. ^ Andreas Jahn: Westward. The first Western European. On: Spektrum.de. March 27, 2008.
  21. ↑ Ewen Callaway: Hominin DNA baffles experts. In: Nature. Volume 504, 2013, p. 16 f. doi: 10.1038 / 504016
  22. ↑ Jeffrey H. Schwartz , Ian Tattersall : Fossil evidence for the origin of Homo sapiens. In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Volume 143, Supplement 51 (= Yearbook of Physical Anthropology ). 2010, pp. 94–121 (here p. 100 f.), Doi: 10.1002 / ajpa.21443
  23. ↑ Chris Stringer : Human evolution: Out of Ethiopia. In: Nature. Volume 423, 2003, pp. 692–695, doi: 10.1038 / 423692a , full text (PDF
  24. ↑ Frido Welker et al .: The dental proteome of Homo antecessor. In: Nature. Online pre-publication from April 1, 2020, doi: 10.1038 / s41586-020-2153-8 .
    Mysterious human ancestor finds its place in our family tree. On: sciencemag.org April 1, 2020.
    Oldest ever human genetic evidence clarifies dispute over our ancestors. On: eurekalert.org from April 1, 2020.
  25. ↑ Katerina Harvati : Neanderthals. In: Evolution: Education and Outreach. Volume 3, No. 3, 2010, p. 368. doi: 10.1007 / s12052-010-0250-0