Prehistoric bones found in Spain are ancestors of Neanderthals

The Guardian (U.K.) ^ | 7-1-2014 | Joel Achenbach

[Renfield]

In a cave in northern Spain a team of scientists has retrieved the remains of 28 prehistoric humans, members of an enigmatic species that could be described as a little bit Neanderthal.They had Neanderthal faces, with heavy brows and protruding noses. They had powerful mandibles and mouths that could open extremely wide, indicating they used their teeth as gripping tools. But they didn't have the large skulls or other robust skeletal features seen in the prototypical Neanderthals who, hundreds of millennia later, roamed Ice Age Europe.

These were apparently ancestors of Neanderthals, inhabitants of a line that many thousands of years earlier had split from the ancestors of modern humans. An international team of scientists published the description of the Spanish fossils in the journal Science, but has not yet given this population a new species name. That will come later, the scientists said, after consultations with colleagues....

[Renfield]

Fossil from the Sima de los Huesos site in Spain. Photograph by Javier Trueba/Madrid Scientific Films/Washington Post

[Renfield]

Ping

[BCW]

“... indicating they used their teeth as gripping tools..”

Does Mic Jagger use his mouth to “grip” things...one shouldn’t jump to conclusions to prove a point about skull formation...

[BroJoeK]

From the article:

"A key finding is the date of the fossils:
Six distinct techniques converge on an estimated age of roughly 430,000 years old.
One technique dated crystals of calcium carbonate that had built up on skulls at the bottom of shallow pools.
Another dated the light colored mud that sits atop the red mud in which the fossils are embedded.

This precise dating makes the Sima fossils the oldest in the Neanderthal lineage and confirms that the ancestors of modern humans and the Neanderthal line diverged more than 430,000 years ago."

[FroggyTheGremlim]

Helen Thomas photo in 5, 4, 3, ...

[devolve]

- Homo Hussein Electus II not included…

[blueunicorn6]

“But has not yet given this new population a species name”

I hereby nominate the name

“Redskins”

[Rannug]

I wonder how many of their “findings” are simply supposition.

[BroJoeK]

All of science is based on “suppositions” that nature is real and is what it appears to be.
Of course, you are free to “suppose” anything else you might wish, just so long as you don’t pretend such alternative suppositions have anything to do with science.