ABSTRACT
Homo I from the site of Fontéchevade, France, has long been an anomaly in the European fossil record. The specimen is a fragment of human frontal bone that lacks a supraorbital torus and appears to belong to an anatomically modern Homo sapiens. However, the level from which it was recovered in 1947 was dated on the basis of associated faunal and lithic material to the last interglacial or earlier. As a result, Homo I has been interpreted, among other things, as a representative of a pre-sapiens lineage in Europe. This paper reports on recent ESR and radiocarbon dates that indicate that the specimen almost certainly dates to oxygen isotope stage 3, which brings it in line with other evidence for the entry of modern Homo sapiens into Europe.
Subject(s)
Fossils , Frontal Bone , Hominidae , Animals , Biological Evolution , Chronology as Topic , Electron Spin Resonance Spectroscopy , France , Frontal Bone/chemistry , Hominidae/anatomy & histology , Hominidae/genetics , Humans , Time FactorsSubject(s)
Frontal Bone/chemistry , Liver/chemistry , Metals, Heavy/analysis , Environmental Monitoring , Female , Humans , Infant, Newborn , Male , PolandABSTRACT
Over the last 20 years a new chemical method, base on the racemization of aspartic acid, has been developed to be used for the estimation of chronologic age in adult individuals. The method has a good accuracy when used on dental enamel, dentine and cartilage. However, in forensic and archeological cases teeth and cartilage are not always available. Since preliminary studies have shown that there are some age-related changes of the D/L aspartic acid ratio also in bone, this study was carried out to further explore if the method could be used for age estimations of bone. Bone samples from 24 individuals, aged 0.2 to 95.6 years were analysed for the D/L ratios with HPLC-technique. Two different fractions of the bone were examined, an acid-soluble peptide fraction and an acid-insoluble collagen-rich fraction. The analyses showed age-related racemizations in both fractions, although of different rates. The correlation coefficients with age were 0.72 in the peptide fraction, and 0.84 in the collagen-rich fraction. It thus seems as if bone may be used for age estimations when more stable tissues like dentine and cartilage are not available.
