An adult tooth dating back more than half-a-million years has been found at Arago Cave in France.
The tooth could be the oldest human remains found in France. It predates by 100,000 years the famous Tautavel man, a 20-year-old prehistoric hunter and ancestor of Neanderthal man, who was discovered at the site in 1971 and whose remains dated back about 450,000 years.
Amélie Vialet, a paleoanthropologist overseeing the excavation at the cave, told Agence France-Presse: “A large adult tooth – we can’t say if it was from a male or female – was found during excavations of soil we know to be between 550,000 and 580,000 years old, because we used different dating methods. This is a major discovery because we have very few human fossils from this period in Europe.”
Story: Angelique Chrisafis, The Guardian | Photo: Denis Dainat, EPA
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