NEWS.WUSTL.EDUErik Trinkaus, a professor of anthropology at Washington University, helped direct a team of researchers which recently discovered a human jawbone dated between 34,000 and 36,000 years old.
The fossil, which is the earliest known modern human bone in Europe, was found in February 2002 in Pestera cu Oase, a Romanian cave located in the Carpathian Mountains. Trinkaus was contacted to aid in research soon thereafter.
“The first fossil was found by [recreational] cavers in Romania [who] contacted the director of the caving institution [Institul de Speologie] in Cluj, Romania,” Trinkaus said. “[The institution] contacted cave biologist Oana Moldovan, [who] started searching the Internet and found my name, looked up my resume, and sent me an email.”
Trinkaus was contacted because the focus of his research has always been the evolution of the genus Homo and the study of late archaic and early modern humans. In the past, Trinkaus has analyzed a child’s skeleton from Portugal as well as bones from the largest known sample of early human remains on sites in Moravia, Czech Republic.
Following a short period of correspondence with Moldovan, Trinkaus was invited to co-direct the research team at the excavation site. After meeting with Moldovan in May 2002, he brought the jawbone to the University for temporary analysis, and then returned to the cave in June 2003 to map the site.
“The original entrance is collapsed, [so] the site was accessed through the inside of the cave system-[this] is what has preserved [the fossils],” said Trinkaus. “The cave was principally a hibernation cave for bears of that time period,”
Though other human bones found during the cave’s mapping are still undergoing analysis, they are likely the same age as the jawbone, which places them in the period during which late Neandertals and early modern humans in Europe overlapped.
“While [the fossils] are ‘modern,’ they are very archaic in a number of features, [which indicates] that modern human evolution continued significantly after the appearance of ‘modern’ humans,” Trinkaus said.
He added that these humans were not fully modern in the sense that we think of ourselves today. Some of their characteristics indicate an archaic human origin and, possibly, a connection to Neandertals.
“We do not know how the human fossils got in there,” he said. “My best guess is that their relatives were putting their bodies in the cave as a form of burial. [There is] no sign they were carried in by carnivores.”
Trinkaus said the new finds were beneficial, but will initiate a lot of hard work.
“The second set of discoveries was unexpected, and we were all very pleased by it-however, it leads to the organization of long-term work at the site, which will be complicated,” he said.
The international research team that was formed is currently organizing to go back next summer. Trinkaus said that no students, however, will be taken because of the dangerous access route of the cave, which involves scuba diving. He described the field group working in the cave as “very specialized.”
Results of the jawbone’s analysis are currently online at www.pnas.org, the Online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.