Field of donated artifacts seems to be treasure trove of Neanderthal bones

A crew of historians, paleontologists and biologists affiliated with establishments throughout Spain has found {that a} field of artifacts donated to a museum in Spain again in 1986 contained a treasure trove of Neanderthal bones. Of their paper revealed within the journal Frontiers in Earth Science, the group describes the historical past of the bones, how they turned up at a museum and what the group has realized concerning the objects to this point.

Again within the late Seventies, beginner paleontologist Miguel Aznar uncovered an unlimited assortment of artifacts and bones exterior of a cave known as Cova Simanya, which is situated in a park simply exterior of Barcelona. Aznar cleaned the supplies and gave them a cursory inspection after which dumped all of them collectively in a field. He then put them in a storage bin at his dwelling, the place they stayed till 1986; the 12 months he donated the field to the Archaeology Museum of Catalonia, the place it sat unexplored till 2020.

After lastly opening the field, the analysis crew discovered that along with pottery fragments and different artifacts, the field additionally held animal bones and 53 Neanderthal bones. Examine of the bones has revealed that all of them belonged to simply three people; an grownup, in all probability a girl, a toddler, in all probability aged 11 or 12 years previous on the time of demise and one other young child, which the crew estimates to have been 7 to eight years previous at their time of demise.

The bones have been dated again to roughly 50,000 years in the past. The researchers are nonetheless within the technique of making an attempt to retrieve DNA from the bones to study extra about them and discover out if the people they characterize have been associated.

To extra precisely place the unique location of the bones from the field, the researchers went to the mouth of the cave as described by Aznar and appeared for extra of them. In so doing, they discovered a knowledge tooth that had as soon as belonged to one of many people whose bones have been discovered within the field. That allowed the analysis crew to definitively tie the remainder of the bones within the field to the identical dig website.

The analysis crew notes that the bone assortment additionally represents essentially the most important discovery of Neanderthal bones within the area, and maybe all the Iberian Peninsula.

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