560,000-year old adult tooth found in France

Perrenoud told the newspaper that human remains that date back 500,000 to 800,000 years ago are very hard to find in Europe, that’s why the recently discovered human tooth is very valuable because it fills in some gaps in the evolution of humans.

Archaeologists at work at Tautavel, one of the world’s most important prehistoric sites.

On Thursday last week, a 16-year-old volunteer archaeologist has found the tooth in Caune de l’Arago cave, home of The European Centre for Prehistoric Research (CERP), which has been excavated for about 50 years, the daily Le Figaro reported. The tooth was unearthed in the southwestern part of France and experts say the discovery is extremely important.

“Human remains from between 500,000 and 800,000 years ago are more than scarce in Europe nowadays, and this tooth fills a bit of the gap of the incompleteness in this 300,000-year period”, he said.

He said that thousands of finds on the site include prehistoric tools and bones from animals, notably horses and buffalos.

“We believe these men have lived for a long time in the cave or have regularly come back into it”, Chevalier said.

The team has found in recent months plenty of information about the people living in the cave at the time, including the pollen content of the area, the vegetation, and even how far the people travelled to get their flint (about 30 kilometres). “There had to be some long periods with snow”. Tony Chevalier, a paleoanthropologist overseeing the discovery, called the tooth, estimated at 560,000 years old, “significant” for its implications on ancient human fossils.

Christian Perrenoud, a geo-archaeologist working on the site, said that while the tooth was a “great find”, there is a lot more left to unearth. French paleoanthropologist Tony Chevalier, scientist at Tautavel’s archaeological laboratory, told the AP this is a “major” discovery, the oldest human body part found in France and one of the very rare human remains from this period in Europe.

“If the tooth has calculus (tartar) attached to it, this may also provide direct evidence of the diet of these ancient humans”, he added.