Newly Disocvered Human Fossil Jaw Sheds Light on Human Evolution

An international team of scientists have unearthed a fossil fragment of a lower jaw bone that belonged to the oldest human ancestor. The fossil was recovered from a Serbian cave.

Scientists dated the mandible to be some 397,000 years old and possibly older than 525,000 years, indicating its origin to an ancient Homo erectus or a primitive-looking Neanderthal precursor.

By utilizing several techniques such as uranium series isotopic analysis, infrared luminescence dating and electron spin resonance, they conclude that this fragment of fossil is the oldest easternmost European fossil of its kind.

"It comes from an area where we basically don't have anything that is known and well- published. Now we have something to start constructing a picture of what's happening in this part of Europe at that time," study co-author Mirjana Roksandic, a bioarchaeologist from the University of Winnipeg in Canada said in a press statement.

The team found this fossilized jawbone while excavating a cave in Balanica, Serbia, in the year 2000. The cave contained ancient archaeological remains. As reported in LiveScience, they found the jawbone at a depth of 5.9 inches, with it having three molars intact.

Till date, it was assumed that the Neanderthals were natives of Europe, but this fossil lacked several characteristic Neanderthal features, including distinctive chewing surfaces on the teeth; thereby indicating that Netherlands did not evolve from the region of Southeastern Europe.

This fossil gives rise to the possibility that Neanderthals did not evolve from Southeastern Europe. The study states that the evolution of Neanderthals' distinctive features could be from the more primitive Homo erectus.

The fossil comes from a strange individual in a population of which some others might be more Neanderthal-like, said Fred Smith, a paleoanthropologist at Illinois State University, who was not involved in the study.

The study was published in the journal PLoS ONE.