New Fossil Discovery of a Distinct, Ancient Human Species Points to Complicated Evolutionary Process

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Static Skull, Mandible, and Parietal Orthographic

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Static skull, mandible, and parietal orthographic. Credit: Tel Aviv University

Analysis of just recently found fossils discovered in Israel recommends that interactions in between various human types were more complicated than formerly thought, according to a group of scientists consisting of Binghamton University sociology teacher Rolf Quam.

The research study group, led by Israel Hershkovitz from Tel Aviv University, released their findings in Science, explaining just recently found fossils from the website of Nesher Ramla in Israel. The Nesher Ramla website dates to about 120,000-140,000 years back, towards the very end of the Middle Pleistocene period.

The human fossils were discovered by Dr. Zaidner of the Hebrew University throughout salvage excavations at the Nesher Ramla ancient website, near the city of Ramla. Digging down about 8 meters, the excavators discovered big amounts of animal bones, consisting of horses, fallow deer, and aurochs, in addition to stone tools and human bones. The human fossils include a partial cranial vault and a mandible. Researchers made virtual restorations of the fossils to examine them utilizing advanced computer system software application and to compare them with other fossils from Europe, Africa, and Asia. The results recommend that the Nesher Ramla fossils represent late survivors of a population of human beings who resided in the Middle East throughout the Middle Pleistocene duration.

Fossil Remains of Skull and Jaw

The Nesher Ramla human mandible (left) and parietal bone (right). Credit: Avi Levin and Ilan Theiler, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University

“The oldest fossils that show Neanderthal features are found in Wesern Europe, so researchers generally believe the Neanderthals originated there,” stated Quam. “However, migrations of different species from the Middle East into Europe may have provided genetic contributions to the Neanderthal gene pool during the course of their evolution.”

The discovers from Nesher Ramla are notable since they sample a period in the Middle East with couple of fossils, so they are necessary additions to the growing fossil record from the area. Other fossils from this approximate period are hard to categorize taxonomically because they appear to reveal a mix of functions seen in both Neanderthals and contemporary human beings.

The Nesher Ramla fossils appear more Neanderthal-like in the mandible and less Neanderthal-like in the cranial vault, however are plainly unique from contemporary human beings. This pattern matches what has actually been recommended for both Neanderthals and contemporary human beings, where the diagnostic skeletal functions of each types appear initially in the facial area and later the cranial vault.

Nesher Ramla Mandible

Transparent view of the mandibular body and tooth roots in the Nesher Ramla mandible. Credit:: Ariel Pokhojaev, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University

Describing the significance of the discover, Dr. Hershkovitz stated: “It enables us to make new sense of previously found human fossils, add another piece to the puzzle of human evolution, and understand the migrations of humans in the old world. Even though they lived so long ago, in the late middle Pleistocene, the Nesher Ramla people can tell us a fascinating tale, revealing a great deal about their descendants’ evolution and way of life.”

The scientists bewared not to associate the Nesher Ramla fossils to a brand-new types. Rather, they organized them together with earlier fossils from a number of websites in the Middle East that have actually been hard to categorize and thought about all of them to represent a regional population of human beings that inhabited the area in between about 420,000-120,000. Given the reality that the Middle East sits at the crossroads of 3 continents, it is most likely that various human groups moved into and out of the area routinely, exchanging genes with the regional occupants. This circumstance may describe the variable physiological functions in these fossils, with the Nesher Ramla fossils representing the current recognized survivors of this localized Middle Pleistocene population.

“This is a complicated story, but what we are learning is that the interactions between different human species in the past were much more convoluted than we had previously appreciated,” stated Quam.

For more on this research study, see A Prehistoric Human Type Previously Unknown to Science.

Reference: “A Middle Pleistocene Homo from Nesher Ramla, Israel” by Israel Hershkovitz, Hila May, Rachel Sarig, Ariel Pokhojaev, Dominique Grimaud-Hervé, Emiliano Bruner, Cinzia Fornai, Rolf Quam, Juan Luis Arsuaga, Viktoria A. Krenn, Maria Martinón-Torres, José María Bermúdez de Castro, Laura Martín-Francés, Viviane Slon, Lou Albessard-Ball, Amélie Vialet, Tim Schüler, Giorgio Manzi, Antonio Profico, Fabio Di Vincenzo, Gerhard W. Weber and Yossi Zaidner, 25 June 2021, Science.
DOI: 10.1126/science.abh3169