http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4482679.stm

A piece of jawbone that has lain in Torquay Museum, Devon, for nearly 80 years could be the oldest example of a modern human yet found in Europe.

The Kent's Cavern specimen was thought to be about 31,000 years old, but re-dating shows it is actually between 37,000 and 40,000 years old.

However, the early dates lead the team behind the research to wonder if the jawbone is actually from a Neanderthal.

A new examination of the fragment along with DNA analysis could sort this out.

The re-dating of this specimen puts it at the very dawn of the arrival of modern humans in Europe

Sir Arthur Keith, who was then Britain's leading anatomist, identified the specimen - known as Kent's Cavern 4 - as that of a modern human (Homo sapiens). It has by and large been accepted as such ever since.

The real significance of Kent's Cavern 4 was not recognised until the 1980s, when radiocarbon dating revealed its age to be 31,000 years old.

Glue contamination

However, the recent discovery that the bone had been strengthened with paper glue (probably soon after it was excavated) placed that radiocarbon age in doubt.

Now, Roger Jacobi of the British Museum and Tom Higham of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit have obtained new radiocarbon dates for animal bones in cave sediments just above and just below where the jaw fragment was found.

Of the handful of modern humans older than 28,000 years known from Europe, only the now questioned Kent's Cavern 4 and the 34-36,000-year-old remains from Pestera cu Oase in Romania have been directly dated.

Direct dating gives an absolute age for the find and the rocks in which it is buried. The alternative, relative dating, only says whether a find is older or younger than something else.

If the Torquay discovery is from Homo sapiens, says Dr Higham, "it would be the oldest directly dated modern human in Europe".

"The [relative] re-dating of this specimen puts it at the very dawn of the arrival of modern humans in Europe. So early, in fact, that it makes us wonder if it is from a modern human or from a Neanderthal," he told the BBC News website.

DNA analysis

Further research on the jawbone fragment is planned with the aim of answering this question.

Chris Stringer, of London's Natural History Museum, and Erik Trinkaus, of Washington University in St Louis, US, will carry out a physical examination of the specimen to see if it carries any features diagnostic of either modern humans or Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis), their close cousins.

Tooth samples will also be sent to the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, where researchers will carry out DNA analysis.

In either case, the specimen will occupy an important place in the European prehistoric record.

If the jawbone is Neanderthal, it will be the first "classic" Neanderthal confirmed in mainland Britain. Early Neanderthal teeth dating to about 200,000 years ago have been found at Pontnewydd, Wales.

But if Kent's Cavern 4 is found to come from an early modern human, or Cro-Magnon, the implications would be even more astounding.

"People have been arguing that [modern humans] may have been in eastern Europe early but they certainly weren't in western Europe," Professor Stringer told the BBC News website.

"If Kent's Cavern does turn out to be a modern human, it would mean some of them at least had come across very early.

"That would mean that in Britain and in western Europe, there was at least 10,000 years of overlap between Neanderthals and modern humans."

The pattern of bones and artefacts found at Kent's Cavern also provides clues to what was going on there.

"The cave is being used on a massive scale by spotted hyenas as a den. There are huge numbers of gnawed bones and layers of coprolites [droppings]. So the hyenas are being interrupted by humans coming in to spend the night and have a meal. I doubt they're really living in the cave," said Dr Jacobi.

The maxilla is associated with stone tools, but the researchers cannot yet determine the type of tool technology to which they belong.

I hope that it's not another Piltdown man ;)

I find this topic very interesting. There are very few differences to the Cromagnon skeleton and that of ours and they were thought to be in direct competition with the Neanderthols in certain areas.
Computer simulations have shown that once Neanderthals and Cromagnons started interacting, a Neanderthal mortality rate just 2% higher than that of Cromagnons could have resulted in Neanderthal extinction within 1,000 years. But some researchers believe that Neanderthals didn't go extinct. Instead, they interbred with moderns, contributing genes to modern Europeans.
In 1999, the skeleton of a child was unearthed in Lapido, Portugal. Dated to around 25,000 years ago, the remains show a mixture of Neanderthal and modern features, suggesting it may be a hybrid. But small fragments of Neanderthal DNA extracted from three different specimens show that they were not closely related to any present day human populations.

Frank Spencer, in his book Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, ISBN 0-19-858522-5), argues that Sir Arthur Keith was probably the originator of the Piltdown hoax.

I still like the Cheddar Man

Frank Spencer, in his book Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, ISBN 0-19-858522-5), argues that Sir Arthur Keith was probably the originator of the Piltdown hoax.
And the only ones that bought it were the British.:cheeky:
I'm especially impressed with how they bought the find of the pre-historic cricket bat supposedly used by 'the first Englishman'.:lol:

The Piltdown hoax is one of these cases were nationalistic fervour ran away with science.
Especially the German paleoanthropologists immediately thought the find 'funny'. But then WWI saved Piltdown man as it made anything said by a German immediately suspect. The British-French refusal to re-establish contact with German science through the 1920's helped stop further discussion as well.

More fool them, since any meaningful international discussion of things like theoretical physics, and other things, in the 1920's had to include the Germans to make any sense. Which the Americans realised for instance. :goodjob:

I hope that it's not another Piltdown man ;)

I don't see how it could be, given that Piltdown Man was made by combining parts of an ape's skull with part of a human's, whereas this is simply a single part of a jawbone...

Jawbone from an orangoutang, the rest of the cranium from a human. Correct?

Notice the "wink" in my post, if you consider my post as spam please let me know.
My little reference to the Piltdown Man got the thread going, didn't it?

:)

wow, panzerking obviously knows alot about this.

Im with NBgreenday cheddar man was great! 10,000 years or whatever and his ancestors were stilling living about a mile away in 2002! :lol: all they'd done is move from a cave and into a house in all that time!