Humanlike animals lived in Europe some 780,000 years ago, almost a quarter of a million years earlier than once believed, according to a study of fossils unearthed in Spain.

Experts said the new findings, reported Friday in the journal Science, fill a major gap in the scientific understanding of human mi-gra-tion and evolution.Thirty-six fossils of hominid bones along with primitive stone tools were found in caves near Burgos in the Atapuerca region of northern Spain by a group of Spanish scientists. A new technique determined the specimens are at least 200,000 years older than any other humanlike fossil found in Western Europe.

"If the dates for this material are correct, then it is an extremely exciting discovery," said Alison Brooks, a George Washington University scientist and a faculty member of the Smithsonian's Institute of Human Origins.

"This finding means there may have been pre-humans widespread in Europe . . . a quarter of a million years earlier than we thought," Brooks said Thursday.

Million-year-old fossils of hominids - extinct creatures of the extended ancestral family of modern humans - have been found in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and as far west as Georgia in the former Soviet Union. But experts long have been puzzled at the absence in Western Europe of any hominid fossils older than half million years.

The discovery by a team led by Eudald Carbonell of the University of Tarragona forces a rethinking of the very early European history.

"It is the most important thing to happen in recent years about research into the peopling of Europe," said F. Clark Howell of the University of California, Berkeley. "It resolved the whole issue about early Europeans in one fell swoop."

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Carbonell and his team found the specimens in an abandoned railway trench in a soil and rock deposit known as Gran Dolina.

The fossils include skull, dental and jaw fragments from four humanlike individuals, including an adolescent and a child. The researchers said the creatures may be ancestors of the Neanderthal, a subspecies that is thought to have lived in Europe until about 40,000 years ago.

The Spanish researchers suggest that the Gran Dolina fossils may be different enough to be a previously unknown member of the extended family of homo, the primate genus that includes modern humans and extinct humanlike animals.

Howell agreed that the find may represent a new species.

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