Pink, the first hominid from Western Europe, was buried in Atapuerca

BarcelonaJune 30, 2022, at the Elephant Pit site in Atapuerca (Burgos), the fossil of the left side of the face of a hominid that lived between 1.1 and 1.4 million years ago was found. More than two years later, researchers from the Atapuerca Research Project have been able to partially reconstruct the face of this adult individual, whom they have named Pink, a tribute by anthropologists Eudald Carbonell and José María Bermúdez de Castro to the musical group Pink Floyd. "When we unearthed it, we thought it would be a Homo antecessor But that wasn't the case; it belongs to an earlier species. The discovery changes the story we had about prehistory," says Rosa Huguet, the researcher at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES-BÚSQUEDA) who led the study published in Nature. Pink would be the oldest hominid located so far in Western Europe.

Until now it was argued that the first hominids to inhabit Western Europe were the predecessorsThis species is believed to be a common ancestor of Sapiens and Neanderthals. "It's just a hypothesis, because we've never been able to do DNA testing," explains Huguet. The remains of Homo antecessor, which were found at the Gran Dolina de Atapuerca site in July 1994, are 860,000 years old and their faces are quite similar to those of sapiens. Pink, on the other hand, has a much more ape-like face: it has no maxillary canine fossa and practically no nasal septum either. It would be much more similar toHomo erectus, but since there is not enough material to reconstruct the upper part of the face, it cannot be definitively stated that it is one of them. The team has also found small differences, such as, for example, that Pink has a slightly narrower face than other Homo erectus. Therefore, the team of researchers has provisionally described it as Homo affinis erectus.

What were 'Homo erectus' like?

Of fossils of Homo erectus They have been found in different places in Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa and Ethiopia), in Asia (China and Indonesia) and in Eastern Europe (Georgia). They all have in common the fact that they represent a significant transformation from earlier hominids, such as the Australopithecus: they are older, more intelligent and better able to adapt to different landscapes in a changing world. More and more is known, but it has not been possible to determine, for example, whether they had the ability to speak.

Pink has been very useful in finding out who other remains found between 2007 and 2008 at Elephant Pit belonged to, such as a jawbone and a phalanx of the hand: "They are 1.2 million years old, and since they didn't name me then, they didn't name the same people." Homo S. P., Now we can say that they belong to the Homo affinis erectus", Huguet defends.

Both the Homo affinis erectus like the Homo antecessor They lived and died in Atapuerca. However, they don't necessarily share DNA. "There's no linear evolution between the two," says Huguet. Beyond that, there's still much to investigate. Did the two species coincide? Where did it come from? Homo affinis erectus? Was there competition for resources and did the best fit survive? Homo antecessor Did they carry as luggage some pathogens that the Pink congeners were not prepared to assume? Or, simply, did they never coincide and some arrived after others? "We can rule out that the reason for the disappearance of the Homo affinis erectus "It was a climate change or disaster," says Huguet.

An idyllic setting

In fact, Pink lived in a rather idyllic setting. At that time, nature was much more lush than it is today in this part of present-day Castile: the climate was humid and temperate, there were large bodies of water, with lots of wildlife in the area, such as beavers, hippopotamuses, ospreys, and turtles; and lush forests, with hazel trees, and other animals such as horses, wild boars, and deer.

In the Elephant Pit, at the same level where the Pink fossil was found, there were quartz and flint tools. "They were quite simple, but they show that these hominids had an effective subsistence strategy and the ability to exploit the resources of the environment," explains Xosé Pedró Rodríguez-Álvarez, co-author of the article published in Nature. The Homo affinis erectus They accessed animal carcasses with the help of stone objects that they had learned to adapt to be able to break the bones and consume the last remains of marrow or residual meat.

The Elephant Pit site is not as rich in fossils as the Dolina Pit because it did not serve as a refuge or habitat. It is a pit where, accidentally swept away by water or sediment, the remains of fauna and plants, as well as hominids that lived or passed through the surface, ended up. In the deepest levels, the history of the Lower Pleistocene (more than 780,000 years old) can be traced, and in the upper levels, remains from about 250,000 years ago. Atapuerca has no end: if you look carefully, you will find new clues about our origins, because there are the remains of up to five different hominids.