PARIS: A 16-year-old French volunteer archeologist has found an adult tooth dating back around 560,000 years in south-western France, in what researchers have hailed as a “major discovery”, The Australian writes.
“A large adult tooth — we can’t say if it was from a male or female — was found during excavations of soil we know to be between 550,000 and 580,000 years old, because we used different dating methods,” palaeoanthropologist Amelie Viallet said.
“This is a major discovery because we have very few human fossils from this period in Europe,” she said.
The tooth was found at one of the world’s most important prehistoric sites in Tautavel, which has been excavated for about 50 years.
The cave is already famous in archaeological circles as it was there that the Tautavel Man was discovered, a 450,000-year-old Homo erectus.
Volunteer Camille, 16, was working with another young archeologist when she found the tooth.
The tooth, which was uncovered on Thursday, predates the Tautavel Man by 100,000 years.
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