The team of researchers, also led through co-prisoners researchers, Dr. Alexandru PetCulescu from the Specification Institute “Emil Racoviţţ”, the Romanian Academy of Bucharest, Romania and Dr. Alexandru PetCulescu from the Specification Institute “Emil Racoviţţţ”, the Romanian Academy of Economics and Astronomy of the Romanian Academy of Anthropology. Claire E. Terhune, an associate professor in the department of anthropology at the University of Arkansas, discovered several bones marked with cuts that appear to have been made through stone equipment from the early homenins at the Grăunceanu site in Romania. These cut marks, which date back about 1. 95 million years, make up some of the first. Evidence of tool use and meat processing in Eurasia.
The discovery, published in Nature Communications, sheds new light on the timing and extent of hominin dispersal across Eurasia. While previous evidence indicated hominin presence in Dmanisi, Georgia, around 1.8 million years ago, the discovery at Grăunceanu pushes this timeline even further back, suggesting that hominins may have been present in Eurasia by at least 2 million years ago.
“The discovery of these cutting brands is due to pushing the timeline of hominin activity in Eurasia,” Curran said. “While evidence of stone equipment in other parts of the world has been discovered, the presence of these brands in the bones gives infrequent and valuable knowledge about the habit of the first human ancestors. “
Curran studies and the team are in decades of past excavations in Romania, where primary fossil discoveries were made in the sixties and eighties. The operating system, which had been organized at the Institute of Specifications “Emil Racoviţ” and in the Oltenia Museum, were widely ignored to the recent Re -Examined by Curran and her foreign team.
“First, we didn’t expect to locate much,” Curran explained. “But a verification of the collections regime, we discovered several marked bones. Through other bones, which suggests planned Boca activities. “
The discovery is remarkable because it predates the remarkable site of Dmanisi in Georgia over the course of some 200,000 years; in the past, thought is the oldest evidence of hominid activity outside of Africa’s gates. This new discovery puts Romania in a crucial position to perceive the spread and habit of early human ancestors.
The effects are supported through biostratigraphic knowledge and the techniques of high resolution PB U-PB, which have established the age of the site with remarkable precision. In addition, Dr. Virgil Drown and the team used isotopic research to reconstruct the environments that those hominians would have known in this domain at that time. These effects imply that the region would have experienced seasonal temperature fluctuations, as well as today, but with greater degrees of precipitation.
According to Curran, this discovery has implications for our understanding of human evolution, which suggests that the first hominians can have a general presence in Eurasia long before the homininous sites most established in Europe.
“The Grăunceanu site represents a pivotal moment in our understanding of human prehistory, Curran said. “It demonstrates that early hominins had already begun to explore and inhabit diverse environments across Eurasia, showing an adaptability that would later play a crucial role in their survival and spread.”
In addition to the marked bones, the Curran team also discovered fossils of a wide diversity of species that lived in Romania at that time, gently losing the surroundings in which these first humans lived. of species, has produced fossils of saber -tooth cats, giraffes and even an extinct species of Pangolin. This location of the high Gentles ordinary biodiversity of the region at the beginning of the Pleistocene.
“Evidence from Romania suggests that early hominids were much more adaptable than in past thinking,” Curran added. “These early humans were able and thrived in a variety of environments. “
In addition to being published in Nature Communications, Curran and her team will present their findings at the American Association of Biological Anthropologists (AABA) conference in March 2025.
“The history of human evolution is far more complex and intricate than we could have imagined, and we are just beginning to uncover the many chapters of that story.”
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