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Human ancestors in Africa were pushed to the brink of extinction around 900,000 years ago, a study shows. The work1, published in Science, suggests a drastic reduction in the population of our ancestors well before our species, Homo sapiens, emerged. The population of breeding individuals was reduced to just 1,280 and didn’t expand again for another 117,000 years. “About 98.7% of human ancestors were lost,” says Haipeng Li, a population geneticist at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, who co-led the study. He says that the fossil record in Africa and Eurasia between 950,000 and 650,000 years...

Scientists in Spain say that they have found a tooth from a distant human ancestor that is more than one million years old. The tooth, a pre-molar, was discovered on Wednesday at the Atapuerca site in northern Spain's Burgos Province. It represented western Europe's "oldest human fossil remain", a statement from the Atapuerca Foundation said. The foundation said it was awaiting final results before publishing its findings in a scientific journal. Human story Several caves containing evidence of prehistoric human occupation have been found in Atapuerca. In 1994 fossilised remains called Homo antecessor (Pioneer Man) - believed to date back...

About 800,000 years ago in what is now Spain, cannibals devoured an early human child who became known as "The Boy of Gran Dolina." But new analysis of these ancient remains has revealed a surprising twist: the child was a girl.The child was a Homo antecessor, an early hominin species that lived in Europe between 1.2 million and 800,000 years ago. Discovered in 1994 in the Gran Dolina cave in northern Spain's Atapuerca Mountains, the species is known primarily from fragments of bones and teeth, which hampered researchers' efforts to determine the sex of H. antecessor individuals.Recently, scientists... examined teeth...

The last 10 years have transformed the evidence concerning the early origins and evolution of Neanderthal populations. Genetic comparisons of Neanderthal and Denisovan ancient DNA suggest that the common ancestor of these populations separated from African ancestors of modern humans prior to 600,000 years ago, followed by a rapid differentiation in Eurasia. Later, additional episodes of gene flow brought genes into Neanderthal populations, including the mtDNA clade carried by all later Neanderthals. Yet, a number of western Eurasian fossil samples from the time between 600,000 and 100,000 years ago are difficult to accommodate within the category of "Neanderthals", including European...

When it comes to deciphering our ancient family tree, DNA from fossils is the new gold standard. But after about half a million years, even the best-preserved DNA degrades into illegibility, leaving the story of our early evolution shrouded in mystery. A new study of proteins taken from the tooth of an enigmatic human ancestor reveals their rough place in the family tree -- and shows how ancient proteins can push beyond the limits of DNA. The new study is "a landmark paper," says Mark Collard, an archaeologist at Simon Fraser University who wasn't involved with the work. "Ancient protein...

Zanolli and colleagues examined dental remains from the sites of Fontana Fanuccio, located 50km southeast of Rome, and Visogliano, located 18km northwest of Trieste. At around 450,000 years old, these teeth join a very short list of fossil human remains from Middle Pleistocene Europe. Using micro-CT scanning and detailed morphological analyses, the authors examined the shape and arrangement of tooth tissues and compared them with teeth of other human species. They found that the teeth of both sites share similarities with Neanderthals and are distinct from modern humans. There has been much debate over the identities and relationships of Middle...

Credit: Mathieu Duval ========================================================================= First direct dating of an early human tooth confirms the antiquity of Homo antecessor, western Europe's oldest known human fossil species. A previous find from the unit TD6 of Atapuerca Gran Dolina archaeological site in northern Spain has yielded more information about our early human lineage. An international team of researchers from Australia, China, France and Spain has conducted the first direct dating study of a fossil tooth belonging to Homo antecessor (H. antecessor), the earliest known hominin species identified in Europe. The study shows that H. antecessor probably lived somewhere between 772 000 and 949...

“We regard its age as quite likely between 865,000 and 810,000 years ago,” said Michael Walker of Spain’s Murcia University, a lead researcher on Cueva Negra. “[Arguably] Until now hand-axes in Europe have not been recorded from before 500,000 years ago,” said Walker. Moreover, he adds, “the evidence of combustion [use of fire] is also the oldest anywhere outside Africa.” The new dating results were acquired through biochronological analysis of small-mammal teeth remains found within the Cueva Negra rockshelter, indicating they accumulated during what is technically called the Matuyama magnetochron, or between 0.99 and 0.78 Ma. Researchers do not yet know...

Archaeologists in Spain are busy excavating the Gran Dolonia portion of the Atapuerca archaeological site for clues to the first humans that arrived in Europe. Many archaeological treasures have come from this northern Spain location known as the caves of the Sierra de Atapuerca. In 2007 human remains were found that date back one and a half million years, considered the oldest Europeans remains ever found. Human remains have also been found from the "Homo antecessor" dating back 850,000-to-950,000-years ago. The youngest remains found here date back a mere 5,000-years ago from the homo sapien species. The site is in...

The earliest known instance of cannibalism among hominids occurred roughly 800,000 years ago. The victims, mainly children, may have been eaten as part of a strategy to defend territories against neighbors, researchers report online in the Journal of Human Evolution. The new study shows how anthropologists use the behavior of modern humans and primates to make inferences about what hominids did in the past -- and demonstrates the limitations of such comparisons. The cannibalism in question was discovered in the Gran Dolina cave site of Spain's Atapuerca Mountains. Eudald Carbonell of the University of Rovira and Virgili in Spain and...

Scientists said Monday they had uncovered evidence suggesting cave dwellers who lived in northern Spain some 500,000 years ago took care of their elderly and infirm. University of Madrid palaeontologists discovered the partial skeleton of a male of a European species ancestral to the Neanderthals who suffered from a stoop and possibly needed a stick to remain upright, they said in a statement. "This individual would be probably impaired for hunting, among other activities. His survival during a considerable period with these impairments allows us to hypothesize that the nomadic group of which this individual was part would provide special...

It is the second complete cranium to be found at the site A 500,000 year old complete cranium has been recovered from the Atapuerca side at Sima de los Huesos de Atapuerca in Burgos. It's the second complete cranium to be found at the site which shows the presence of Homo Antecessor in the region. Sources at the Atapuerca Foundation say that once the practical entire cranium has been recovered the meticulous reconstruction of the bones will be undertaken during the winter. The first cranium to be found at the site, known as Craneo 5 is now on display...

A study of the remains revealed that they turned to cannibalism to feed themselves and not as part of a ritual, that they ate their rivals after killing them, mostly children and adolescents. "It is the first well-documented case of cannibalism in the history of humanity, which does not mean that it is the oldest," he said. The remains discovered in the caves "appeared scattered, broken, fragmented, mixed with other animals such as horses, deer, rhinoceroses, all kinds of animals caught in hunting" and eaten by humans, he said. "This gives us an idea of cannibalism as a type gastronomy,...