The Journal of Young Investigators: An Undergraduate, Peer-Reviewed Science Journal

20 May 2005 - Researchers have dated some human fossils from the Czech Republic at over 31,000 years old, making them the oldest assemblage of early modern humans in Europe, according to a paper published in the 19 May edition of Nature.

The team – made of researchers from the Natural History Museum in Vienna, the University of Vienna in Austria, and Washington University in St. Louis – has attempted to radiocarbon date the fossils from the Mladec Caves in Moravia, Czech Republic, many times; however, this is the first time they obtained dependable data.

Anthropologists Maria Teschler-Nicola of the Natural History Museum in Vienna and Erik Trinkaus, professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, affirmed that "the dating results document that these samples are as old as we thought they should be.”

The fossils are from several individuals of different ages, and include cranial, postcranial, and dental portions of the skeleton. However, in these latest datings only the teeth were used, which allowed the researchers to get accurate results. The teeth still had intact enamel, or were covered by other intact bones, which protected them from degradation and contamination, making them better for direct dating than traditional bone samples.

Many anthropologists consider the Mladec fossils to be remains of early modern humans, however, some argue that their unusually large wisdom teeth and facial structures may indicate a connection with late Neanderthal ancestry, possibly due to interbreeding.

Despite this recent debate, the findings fill an important gap in modern human emergence into Europe. Having skeletal elements from multiple males and females of different life stages, the Mladec assemblage is the oldest assemblage of modern humans to be directly dated.

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