Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Fossils: The earliest modern humans in Europe (AOP)
Fossils: ‘Sabre-toothed squirrel’-like mammal from South America
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Fossils: The earliest modern humans in Europe (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature10484
DOI: 10.1038/nature10617
Reanalysis of a human jawbone discovered in the UK and two teeth from an Italian site suggests that these fossils, described in Nature by two independent groups, represent the earliest physical evidence for anatomically modern humans in Europe. The fossils demonstrate the rapid dispersal of early modern humans across Europe well before 40,000 years ago.
The earliest modern humans in Europe are thought to have appeared between 44,000 and 42,000 years ago, on the basis of sites and stone tools assumed to have been made by modern humans rather than Neanderthals. But physical evidence for early humans is rare and direct evidence tends to date to only about 41,000 to 39,000 years ago.
A jawbone excavated from a site near Torquay in the UK in 1927 was initially diagnosed as a modern human jaw from the Upper Palaeolithic, and radiocarbon dating carried out in 1989 indicated that the fossil was about 35,000 years old. Using ultrafiltration, a more refined carbon dating technique, Thomas Higham, Chris Stringer and colleagues show that the jaw actually dates to between 44,200 and 41,500 years ago. The dental morphology of the jawbone indicates that its attribution as early human, rather than Neanderthal, is reliable.
Stefano Benazzi and his team reanalyzed two molars, which were discovered in the Grotta del Cavallo site in southern Italy and originally classified as Neanderthal. In fact, the specimens have come from anatomically modern humans, the authors report. New radiocarbon dating and investigation of personal ornaments, such as shell beads, from the same site, suggest that the teeth are around 45,000 to 43,000 years old.
CONTACT
Thomas Higham (University of Oxford, UK)
Tel: +44 1865 285 231; E-mail: [email protected]
Chris Stringer (Natural History Museum, London, UK)
Tel: +44 207 942 5539; E-mail: [email protected]
Stefano Benazzi (University of Vienna, Austria)
Tel: +39 328 284 0616; E-mail: [email protected]
For more information please contact the Nature press office.
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Fossils: ‘Sabre-toothed squirrel’-like mammal from South America (pp 98-102; N&V)
The discovery of the fossilized remains of a bizarre, primitive mammal from the Late Cretaceous of South America is reported in Nature this week. The find bridges a gap of about 60 million years in the mammalian fossil record of South America, providing an insight into a largely unexplored period in the continent’s prehistory.
Dryolestoids are a group of primitive, extinct mammals belonging to the lineage leading to modern marsupials and placental mammals. They are known mainly from teeth and jaws from the Jurassic of North America and Europe, although they also thrived in South America; the lack of pre-Late Cretaceous remains of these creatures has made it hard to study their origin and early diversification.
Guillermo Rougier and colleagues describe skulls and jaws of a dryolestoid from the early Late Cretaceous of Argentina, representing a previously unknown species named for the bizarre, fictional creatures at the centre of the stories of Argentine writer Julio Cortázar. With its long snout, very long canines and large eyes, the mouse-sized animal bears a striking resemblance to the fictional sabre-toothed squirrels depicted in the Ice Age films. The findings add to the understanding of relationships between mammals in the Late Cretaceous.
CONTACT
Guillermo Rougier (University of Louisville, KY, USA)
Tel: +1 502 852 4541; E-mail: [email protected]
Christian de Muizon (Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France) N&V author
Tel: +33 1 40 79 30 45; E-mail: [email protected]
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