Thursday, April 10, 2008

Was she the first European?
A lower jawbone with a haggle of teeth.

That's all there was.

But its discovery in a limestone cave in northern Spain could be the holy grail long sought by anthropologists.

The fossil is by far the oldest skeletal evidence of a human presence in Europe. Dated at 1.3 million years, the find is not only exceptional in itself, but for the light it will shed on a question that's long been controversial: When did the earliest humans reach Europe?


UPDATE: Link fixed.