Sea gives up Neanderthal fossil [ dredged up from the North Sea ]

BBC ^ | Monday, June 15, 2009 | Paul Rincon

[SunkenCiv]

Scientists in Leiden, in the Netherlands, have unveiled the specimen -- a fragment from the front of a skull belonging to a young adult male. Analysis of chemical "isotopes" in the 30,000-60,000-year-old fossil suggest a carnivorous diet, matching results from other Neanderthal specimens... The Neanderthal frontal bone is the first known "archaic" human specimen to have been recovered from the sea bed anywhere in the world. It was found among animal remains and stone artefacts dredged up 15km off the coast of the Netherlands in 2001. The fragment was spotted by Luc Anthonis, a private fossil collector from Belgium, in the sieving debris of a shell-dredging operation... The North Sea fossil also bears a lesion caused by a benign tumour -- an epidermoid cyst -- of a type very rare in humans today... Dr Mike Richards, also from the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, analysed... isotopes, of the elements nitrogen and carbon in the fossilised bone... results show he was an extreme carnivore, surviving on a diet consisting largely of meat... other research suggests that in Gibraltar, on the southern coast of Iberia, some Neanderthals were exploiting marine resources, including dolphins, monk seals and mussels. Researchers decided against carbon dating the specimen; this requires the preservation of a protein called collagen. Professor Hublin explained that while there was some collagen left in the bone, scientists would have needed to destroy approximately half of the fossil in order to obtain enough for dating.

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 06/15/2009. Just a ping message update.

[JimRed]

They, could tell from that, that this is part of a neanderthal young male?

That partial brow ridge was the clue.