Featured Image Credit: Nadina/CC BY-SA 3.0
Topics: Science
Callum Jones
Scientists have been left puzzled after finding a terrifying skull in a cave wall that is not believed to be human or Neanderthal.
With all the technology in the hands of experts these days, there's not a lot that scientists don't know. But sometimes you can have all the technology in the world and still not have the desired answers.
And that's exactly what happened after scientists found a skull attached to the wall of Petralona Cave in northern Greece in 1960, with answers to the mysterious find eluding experts until very recently.
Researchers have long argued about the position of the skull on the family tree and have spent many a year trying to figure out how old it actually is.
Advert
Well, a new study published in the Journal of Human Evolution may just have the answers those looking at the skull have long desired.
It's believed the skull was at least 277,000 years old, and while it remains unclear how long the fossil was in the cave, researchers have managed to narrow it down from a previous large window of between 170,000 and 700,000 years old.
The skull is neither human nor Neanderthal, however, which has somewhat puzzled scientists.
The New York Post notes that the individual lived during the Pleistocene epoch in Europe with the Neanderthals, though it is believed to be part of the Homo heidelbergensis group.
It's generally believed that the group migrated to Europe some 500,000 years ago after originally evolving in Africa.
Chris Stringer, an author of the study and a paleoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London, told Live Science: "The new age estimate supports the persistence and coexistence of this population alongside the evolving Neanderthal lineage in the later Middle Pleistocene of Europe."
While no definite answers have been provided, Stringer and his team believe the individual was a male, while they also believe he was a young adult based on the health of his teeth.
The latest findings do provide some hope experts will be able to identify said specimen in the coming months and years as their investigations continue.
"This topic has been debated since its discovery more than 60 years ago, highlighting the difficulties in applying physical dating methods to prehistoric samples," the team said in their findings.
They added: "Thus, our results support the view that hominins allied to H. heidelbergensis sensu lato persisted in Europe during the later Middle Pleistocene."