A cosmopolitan planetĭating the Broken Hill skull has proved difficult, largely because the mine in which it was discovered has long been quarried away. This new piece of research carried out by Chris and his colleagues suggests that the picture was much more complex than this. sapiens evolving in Africa, and Homo neanderthalensis (the Neanderthals) which evolved in Eurasia,' says Chris. heidelbergensis existed about 500,000 years ago, and was probably the last common ancestor of our species H. 'Until recently I - and many other palaeoanthropologists - argued that H. Several of those other fossils dated to around 500,000 years ago, giving rise to an intriguing theory. heidelbergensis, in the form of bones and stone tools, have been found in many parts of Africa, as well as much of Europe. More recently, many researchers have instead suggested that these fossils represents variation within another ancient human species known as Homo heidelbergensis. When the fossils arrived in London they were examined by the palaeontologist Arthur Smith Woodward, who declared that they belonged to a new species of human, which he named Homo rhodesiensis. They were donated by the Rhodesia Broken Hill Mine Company who owned the mine to what was then the British Museum but is now the Natural History Museum, London in 1921. The human fossils were noted for their importance as the first significant hominin fossils found in Africa. These are not the only fossils to have come out of the Broken Hill mine, as records show that it was rich in the remains of animal bones. Elsewhere in the site, various other fossils were found, including fragments of femur and the partial jaw of another individual. It was unearthed by an unnamed African miner and his Swiss colleague called Tom Zwigelaar. The skull was discovered in a lead and zinc mine at Broken Hill, in what was then known as Northern Rhodesia but is now Kabwe in Zambia. The study has been published in the journal Nature. heidelbergensis was living and dispersing across the landmass but also when our own species, Homo sapiens, was evolving prior to making its forays into the rest of the world. The new age for the fossil changes what we thought was happening on the African continent, not only when H. Prof Chris Stringer, a researcher in human evolution at the Museum, has worked with geochronologist Rainer Grün and other colleagues to produce the best estimate for when the owner of the Broken Hill skull died.Ĭhris says, 'Through years of painstaking work including direct dating of the skull itself and other human and non-human materials found around the Broken Hill site, we have produced a best age estimate of about 299,000 years for the Broken Hill skull. But it was long thought to have been roughly 500,000 years old, tallying up nicely with the other dates known for the species. Pinning an exact date on the Broken Hill fossil has been difficult, because the site from which it was found has since been destroyed. heidelbergensis spread throughout much of Africa and Europe, leaving in their wake a smattering of fossils and plenty of stone tools. Thought to have first appeared some 600,000 years ago, H. While initially it was named Homo rhodesiensis, it has since been classified as one of the best preserved fossils of another ancient human species called Homo heidelbergensis. When the Broken Hill skull was first discovered in what is now Kabwe, Zambia, it was quickly realised to have belonged not to a modern human, but an ancient one.
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