Sima de los Huesos skulls similar to Neanderthals

An analysis of 17 skulls from Sima de los Huesos in the Atapuerca Mountains of northern Spain indicates that they have distinct Neanderthal traits, including robust lower jaws, small teeth at the rear of the jaw, and thick brow ridges with a distinctive double arch.

Yet they also have relatively small brains and other primitive features. Paleoanthropologist Juan Luis Arsuaga of Complutense University and his colleagues report in Science that the fossils represent the “oldest reliably dated” specimens of proto-Neanderthals, at 430,000 years old.

“It is now clear that the full suite of the Neanderthal characteristics did not evolve at the same pace,” he told Phys.org. The discovery also suggests that Neanderthals and modern humans developed their big brains independently.

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The Atapuerca Caves in Spain

In the late 19th century, a railway cutting driven through the Atapuerca Mountains in Spain led to the discovery of the ancient limestone caves near Burgos. After several excavations during the 20th century, a student made a startling discovery at the Atapuerca Caves in Spain . A human jawbone buried neatly in the caves gave way to the significance of Atapuerca.

Located in the Atapuerca Mountains, a spectacular cave system near the Spanish town of Ibeas de Juarros and Atapuerca, has provided paleontologists with an extensive fossil record of the first human beings in Western Europe. The fossils found have provided incalculable amounts of information regarding the appearance of our ancestors, more than one million years ago.

Read the Entire Story of the Atapuerca Caves in Spain

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