VIENNA, Austria – University of Vienna anthropologist Emily M. Pigot used zoology with mass spectrometry (ZOOMS) to analyze more than 150 unidentified bone fragments from the Starussel Rock Shelter, located on the Crimean Peninsula, according to a statement released by the University of Vienna. More than 90 percent of the bone fragments were identified as horse or deer bones, while some belonged to mammoths and wolves. Pigott and his team identified a two-inch piece of bone, however, as human. A study of the fragment with microCT imaging showed that it came from a thigh bone, while radiocarbon dating showed it to be between 44,000 and 46,000 years old. Finally, DNA analysis indicated that it came from a Neanderthal individual from the Altai region of Siberia, about 1,800 miles to the east, and Neanderthals from central Europe. “In Eurasia, very few human fossils are known from the critical period when Neanderthals disappeared and Homo sapiens replaced them, and still less than genetic information, “said Piggott.” He and his colleagues believe that groups of Neanderthals migrated between Crimea, Central Asia and Europe during a period of favorable climate in the late Pleistocene. Read the original scholarly article about this research. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. To read about interbreeding between early humans, go to “Hominin Hybrids”. aArchaeologyTop 10 Discoveries of 2018
A post-Neanderthal bone from Crimea was first published in Archeology Magazine.
