The bones were unearthed by researchers from the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES) at Abauntz Cave in the Ultzama Valley, a natural corridor through the western Pyrenees linking the Iberian Peninsula with the rest of Europe. Four of the fragments come from the right hand of an adult — three metacarpals and a middle finger bone — while protein analysis confirmed two further fragments as human, and genetic testing established the individual was male.
Direct radiocarbon dating placed the bones at roughly 46,000 years old, between 44,000 and 49,000 years, a rare combination of physical, genetic and chronological evidence for remains this old, according to Archaeology Magazine. The identification was announced on October 19 at an event led by Navarre's regional president, María Chivite.
Some of the bones carry bite marks from carnivores, offering clues about how the remains ended up in the cave. The same layer holds stone tools and butchered animal bones, suggesting Neanderthals used the cave for food preparation and daily work, IFLScience reports.
'Abauntz lies along a natural corridor connecting both sides of the Pyrenees,' the project's co-directors, Dr Andión Arteaga and Dr Mikel Arlegi, told IFLScience — making it a key site for understanding how late Neanderthal populations moved and interacted in their final millennia. The team is still digging for more. The western Pyrenees remain one of the great blank spots in the Neanderthal record: stone tools and butchered animal bones proved they passed through, but no human fossil had ever been found in Navarre. The Abauntz individual lived just a few thousand years before Neanderthals vanished from the European fossil record entirely.
Photo: Emilio Gómez Fernández, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons