2013 Articles

Comment on ‘The oldest human fossil in Europe from Orce (Spain) by Toro-Moyano et al. (2013)

Muttoni, Giovanni; Scardia, Giancarlo; Kent, Dennis V.

A critique of evidence for human occupation of Europe older than the Jaramillo subchron (~1 Ma). The recently dated human tooth from Barranco León, Spain, would seem to indicate that hominins were present in southern Europe as early asw1.4 Ma (millions of years ago) based on electron spin resonance (ESR) ages on quartz grains coupled with magnetostratigraphic and biochronologic correlations (Toro-Moyano et al., 2013). We suggest that the evidence for human occupation of Europe prior to 1 Ma is highly equivocal.