Spaniards discover remains of oldest European

Jun 30, 2007, 22:00 GMT

Madrid - Spanish scientists have discovered the remains of the oldest European, the daily El Pais reported on Saturday.

According to the paper, the scientists found the front molar of a human who lived in northern Spain some 1.2 million years ago.

The tooth was found at an excavation site in the Sierra de Atapuerca mountains in the province of Burgos, where scientists in 1994 discovered the remains of the oldest inhabitants of Europe known to science until then.

The scientists had classified that human, which had lived some 800,000 to 900,000 years ago, as a 'homo antecessor.' It is not known yet, what class the new find is part of.

'Maybe it is an ancestor of the homo antecessor, but we can't confirm this yet,' scientist Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro told the paper.

The excavation site's estimate at 1.2 million years was very conservative, Bermudez de Castro said. 'Maybe the tooth is even older,' he added.

The find showed that the European continent had been inhabited by humans much earlier than had been assumed until recently.

'Up to the beginning of the 1990s people assumed that the first Europeans lived some 500,000 years ago,' Bermudez de Castro said.

The Atapuerca finds showed that Europe had been inhabited significantly earlier, according to the scientist.