The find shows that members of the genus Homo, to which modern humans belong, colonized the region much earlier than previously believed. Details of the discovery were published in the March 27 issue of the journal Nature.the fossil is about 1.2 million years old. That's 500,000 years older than the previous oldest known humanlike fossils from the area. The new find bolsters the view that Homo reached Europe not long after leaving Africa almost 2 million years ago.
The researchers tentatively classified the new fossil as an earlier example Homo antecessor (Pioneer Man), the species represented by the previous oldest fossils and thought to be the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans.
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