Autor: Roberto Sáez

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5 curiosidades evolutivas de nuestra cara

Algunos rasgos morfológicos del cráneo tal vez no suelen llamar tanto la atención en su trayectoria evolutiva como la forma de la bóveda craneal, la apertura nasal, los arcos superciliares o la cresta sagital. Para empezar, los humanos modernos tenemos una característica única que ningún otro hominino ha desarrollado de manera generalizada:

El mentón

H. erectus D2735, H. heidelbergensis Mauer-1, H. neanderthalensis La Ferrassie-1, H. sapiens moderno

Existen distintas hipótesis que tratan de explicar por qué Homo sapiens desarrolló un mentón si bien, como suele pasar en paleontología, probablemente el proceso evolutivo haya seguido un recorrido multifactorial:

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The oldest artworks in Europe

1) Nerja Cave (Málaga, Spain)

Six paintings of seals on stalactites discovered in 2012. Some charcoal remains were found beside the paintings: they were radiocarbon dated about 43,000 years old, although it is pending to date the paint pigment itself. If such dating can be confirmed, this will imply that Nerja Cave art is the earliest human paintings ever found and the oldest Neandertal art (they were the hominids living in that region at that time). They coexist with other 2 groups of paintings, one from the Solutrean period 20,000 years B.P. and another from the Magdalenian period around 12,000 B.P.

Nerja

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El Paleolítico en el Museo de Prehistoria y Arqueología de Cantabria

MUPAC

Soy muy fan de este museo… Destacaría 3 cosas:

  • La colección de útiles líticos, completísimo recorrido por los últimos 100.000 años.
  • La colección de arte mueble, una de las más ricas del mundo. Espectacular.
  • La réplica de un sector de la cueva de La Garma.

He montado un resumen en la siguiente presentación:

The real hobbit, Homo floresiensis
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The real hobbit, Homo floresiensis

In 2003, the skeleton LB1 was discovered in the Liang Bua cave on Flores island, Indonesia. Published on October 27, 2004, in Nature, it belongs to a nearly complete female individual dated to 100-60 thousand years ago (ka).

LB-1 Homo floresiensis

LB1 skull. Photo: Roberto Sáez

Apart from LB1, other remains were discovered in the cave. They all depict a human of reduced size (around 100 cm tall, hence the nickname «hobbit») and a small brain (around 400 cc, similar to that of adult chimps). Yet, these remains were found alongside complex tools dated to 190-50 ka and potential evidence of fire.

The discoverers (P. Brown, M. Morwood, and other coworkers) classified the fossil as a new species, Homo floresiensis. Initially dated at 18 ka, a revised stratigraphy and chronology (Sutikna et al, 2016) moved the Liang Bua finds to the range of approximately 200 ka to 60 ka.

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Atapuerca: some key figures

In 2014 we had in Spain the privilege of holding the XVII Congress of UISPP (Union International de Sciences Préhistoriques et Protohistoriques) in Burgos. The organiser was the Atapuerca Foundation, as a recognition of the decisive value that Atapuerca provides to the world of Prehistory, Archaeology and Paleoanthropology.

At the time, this was the Congress with the highest number of scientific articles submitted ever in the history of UISPP: 2,000 articles presented by 3,000 authors.

Atapuerca is one of the most relevant sites for human evolution in the world, probably the most important one for the last half-million years period. Some key figures below can support this statement.

Sima de los Huesos site in Cueva Mayor:

atapuerca-sima

  • A total of 7,500 fossils found so far, belonging to 29 individuals of the same population from 430,000 years ago.
  • They are ancestor of Neandertals. For one decade this population was assigned to the species Homo heidelbergensis, but the extended study of this huge fossil record discarded this assignment.
  • 17 skulls found. One of them is the most complete skull of a Middle Pleistocene Homo: Cranium number 5 (‘Miguelón’)
  • The most complete pelvis in the fossil record, called ‘Elvis’.
  • Sima also provided some tiny bones of the middle ear, really strange to find.
  • The enormous number of fossils contrast with the area they are buried in Sima. Only 20 centimeters are excavated from a 1 m2 area every season.
  • Only in 2014 200 hominin fossils have been found. This figures doubles the total number of human fossils extracted from the rest of sites worldwide.
  • Since the beginning of excavations in 1978, the Sima has provided more than half of the Homo fossils worldwide.

Gran Dolina has provided more than 100 fossils of 6 individuals from 800,000 years ago classified as a new species, Homo antecessor. They are one of the largest set of the oldest fossils in Western Europe.

Sima del Elefante has provided one of the oldest human fossils in Western Europe, dated to 1.3 million years.

Not only Paleolithic but Atapuerca also has more than 200 Neolithic sites in a 314 km2 area.

Overall, Atapuerca shows a human occupation since 1.3 million years B.P. until Roman age in the 4th century.