Volunteers discover a 560,000-year-old milk tooth in France | Life

TOULOUSE, July 25 – French and Spanish archaeologists have discovered a 560,000-year-old child's milk tooth in the mountains South of France – an "exceptional fossil" yesterday

The fossil was discovered Monday night in the cave of Arago, a vast prehistoric cave in Tautavel on the French side of the Pyrenees bordering Spain.

The site laboratory confirmed that the tooth belonged to a human subspecies, probably homo heidelbergensis, which shares traits with modern humans and our homo erectus ancestors.

"The tooth probably belonged to a child aged five or six, who still had their baby teeth but had used a good amount of it" Tony Chevalier, paleoanthropologist at the University of Perpignan and research center at Tautavel.

The tooth is estimated to be 560,000 years old – about 5,000 years old – It would be 100,000 years older than the famous Tautavel man whose skull was found on the same site in 1971.

The researchers said that the discovery was "outstanding" because the human remains dating from this period are extremely rare, although some of the teeth of the time were found previously at Arago Cave.

Knight said that the baby tooth – the first found on the site – "would teach us a lot about the behavior of the man" at that time

with the question of how the people lived in the cave of Tautavel, where some 150 ancient human fossils were found.

They have not yet determined whether it was a temporary shelter where our ancestors were stopping for a hunting break. makes a home more permanent – a mystery that the baby tooth could help solve. – AFP