Homo antecessor
A European hominin with a strikingly modern face, 800,000 years before anyone else has one.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 120 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 50 thousand years
- Era
- Early Pleistocene, Quaternary
Homo antecessor is known chiefly from the Gran Dolina cave at Atapuerca, from levels around 850,000 to 780,000 years old. Its midface is flat and hollowed in a way that resembles modern humans far more than its contemporaries do, which has made its position contentious — ancestor of both Neanderthals and us, or a side branch with a convergent face. Ancient protein analysis published in 2020 placed it as a close sister group to the Neanderthal-Denisovan-modern lineage rather than a direct ancestor.