The oldest human fossil in Europe, from Orce (Spain).

The Orce region has one of the best late Pliocene and early Pleistocene continental paleobiological records of Europe. It is situated in the northeastern sector of the intramontane Guadix-Baza Basin (Granada, Andalusia, southern Spain). Here we describe a new fossil hominin tooth from the site of Barranco León, dated between 1.02 and 1.73 Ma (millions of years ago) by Electron Spin Resonance (ESR), which, in combination with paleomagnetic and biochronologic data, is estimated to be close to 1.4 Ma. While the range of dates obtained from these various methods overlaps with those published for the Sima del Elefante hominin locality (1.2 Ma), the overwhelming majority of evidence points to an older age. Thus, at the moment, the Barranco León hominin is the oldest from Western Europe.

Déjà vu: a reappraisal of the taphonomy of quarry VM4 of the Early Pleistocene site of Venta Micena (Baza Basin, SE Spain).

Venta Micena, an Early Pleistocene site of the Baza Basin (SE Spain), preserves a rich and diverse assemblage of large mammals. VM3, the main excavation quarry of the site, has been interpreted as a den of the giant hyaena Pachycrocuta brevirostris in the plain that surrounded the Baza palaeolake. Taphonomic analysis of VM3 has shown that the hyaenas scavenged the prey previously hunted by the hypercarnivores, transported their remains to the communal den, and consumed the skeletal parts according to their marrow contents and mineral density. In a recent paper (Luzón et al. in Sci Rep 11:13977, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-93261-1 , 2021), a small sample of remains unearthed from VM4, an excavation quarry ~ 350 m distant from VM3, is analysed. The authors indicate several differences in the taphonomic features of this assemblage with VM3, and even suggest that a different carnivore could have been the agent involved in the bone accumulation process. Here, we make a comparative analysis of both quarries and analyse more skeletal remains from VM4. Our results indicate that the assemblages are broadly similar in composition, except for slight differences in the frequency of megaherbivores, carnivores and equids according to NISP values (but not to MNI counts), the degree of bone weathering, and the intensity of bone processing by the hyaenas. Given that VM4 and VM3 were not coeval denning areas of P. brevirostris, these differences suggest that during the years when the skeletal remains were accumulated by the hyaenas at VM3, the rise of the water table of the Baza palaeolake that capped with limestone the bones was delayed compared to VM4, which resulted in their more in-depth consumption by the hyaenas.

The earliest cut marks of Europe: a discussion on hominin subsistence patterns in the Orce sites (Baza basin, SE Spain).

Ancient evidence of human presence in Europe is recorded in several Early Pleistocene archaeopalaeontological sites from Spain, France and Italy. This is the case of Barranco León (BL) and Fuente Nueva-3 (FN-3), two localities placed near the town of Orce (depression of Baza and Guadix, SE Spain) and dated to ~1.4 Ma. At these sites, huge assemblages of Oldowan tools and evidence of defleshing, butchering and marrow processing of large mammal bones have been recovered together with a deciduous tooth of Homo sp. in the case of level BL-D. In this study, we: (i) describe in detail the anthropic marks found in the bone assemblages from these sites; (ii) analyse patterns of defleshment, butchery and marrow processing, based on the modifications identified in the cortical surface of the fossils; and (iii) discuss on the subsistence strategies of the first hominins that inhabited the European subcontinent during Early Pleistocene times.

Age and date for early arrival of the Acheulian in Europe (Barranc de la Boella, la Canonja, Spain).

The first arrivals of hominin populations into Eurasia during the Early Pleistocene are currently considered to have occurred as short and poorly dated biological dispersions. Questions as to the tempo and mode of these early prehistoric settlements have given rise to debates concerning the taxonomic significance of the lithic assemblages, as trace fossils, and the geographical distribution of the technological traditions found in the Lower Palaeolithic record. Here, we report on the Barranc de la Boella site which has yielded a lithic assemblage dating to ∼1 million years ago that includes large cutting tools (LCT). We argue that distinct technological traditions coexisted in the Iberian archaeological repertoires of the late Early Pleistocene age in a similar way to the earliest sub-Saharan African artefact assemblages. These differences between stone tool assemblages may be attributed to the different chronologies of hominin dispersal events. The archaeological record of Barranc de la Boella completes the geographical distribution of LCT assemblages across southern Eurasia during the EMPT (Early-Middle Pleistocene Transition, circa 942 to 641 kyr). Up to now, chronology of the earliest European LCT assemblages is based on the abundant Palaeolithic record found in terrace river sequences which have been dated to the end of the EMPT and later. However, the findings at Barranc de la Boella suggest that early LCT lithic assemblages appeared in the SW of Europe during earlier hominin dispersal episodes before the definitive colonization of temperate Eurasia took place.