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Romanian fossils show hominins in Europe 500,000 years earlier than thought

Research led by the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Ohio University has found evidence of hominin activity at a Romanian fossil site dating to at least 1.95 million years ago. This discovery pushes back the known date of European hominins by half a million years and establishes Grăunceanu as the oldest confirmed European evidence of hominin activity.

Grăunceanu, part of the Tetoiu Formation in Romania, lies within a Late Villafranchian biochronological zone (2.2–1.9 Ma) and has yielded a diverse faunal assemblage indicative of a forest-steppe environment.

The timing of the earliest hominin dispersals into Eurasia has been elusive. Fossil evidence from Dmanisi, Georgia (~1.85–1.77 million years ago) represents the earliest indisputable hominin presence outside Africa. Isolated sites in Europe and Asia with lithics and bone modifications suggest earlier, intermittent hominin activity. Until now, no European site had reliably demonstrated hominin activity predating ~1.4 million years ago with robust age determinations.

In the study, "Hominin presence in Eurasia by at least 1.95 million years ago," in Nature Communications, researchers analyzed faunal remains from Grăunceanu, a site in the Olteţ River Valley of Romania, identifying cut marks indicative of hominin butchery methods.

A total of 4,524 specimens were examined for surface modifications such as weathering, root etching, and anthropogenic cut marks. Linear marks were analyzed macroscopically and quantitatively using 3D optical profilometry.

Twenty bones exhibited anthropogenic surface modifications, including seven high-confidence cut-marked specimens. These marks were found on animal tibiae and mandibles, showing straight, transverse trajectories consistent with defleshing. Quantitative analysis confirmed their classification as cut marks, distinguishing them from carnivore, trampling, or excavation damage.

Seven dentine samples from Grăunceanu and two from nearby sites were dated using high-precision laser ablation U-Pb. The method yielded minimum depositional ages for the fossils ranging from 2.01 ± 0.20 to 1.87 ± 0.16 million years ago, averaging around 1.95 million years. These results align with prior faunal-based biochronological estimates and establish the site as the oldest known evidence of hominin activity in Europe.

Oxygen and carbon isotope ratios from a horse molar were analyzed to reconstruct seasonal temperature and precipitation patterns, suggesting a temperate woodland-grassland environment with higher (than modern-day) seasonal rainfall. Faunal remains, including ostrich, pangolin, and an extinct European monkey, suggest relatively mild winters despite the site's mid-latitude position.

Grăunceanu provides evidence of hominin activity in East-Central Europe by at least 1.95 million years ago, pushing back the timing of their presence in the region and suggesting earlier dispersals into Eurasia. This evidence challenges the previous hypothesis that hominins first established themselves in Georgia, indicating they likely exploited a broader range of environments much earlier.

The presence of warm-adapted fauna, such as pangolins and ostriches, alongside isotope evidence for heavy seasonal precipitation, suggests that hominins may have dispersed during interglacial periods when conditions were more favorable.

Finding such ancient hominins capable of exploiting temperate and seasonal environments illustrates the early ecological flexibility of the species that has seen many successful dispersals out of Africa.