Romanian fossils are earliest evidence of hominins in Europe, predating other finds by up to half a million years

Amazing stuff!

"The bones are at least 1.95 million years old but could be up to 2.2 million years old. They may help build a picture of when early human ancestors left Africa and reached Europe and Asia, and the route they took. This has been an area of debate for decades.

The previous oldest evidence of hominins in Europe – stone tools found in Ukraine in 2024 – are just 1.4 million years old. In Dmanisi, Georgia – at the border of Europe and Asia – finds have been dated to 1.85–1.77 million years. ...

Cut marks that could only have been made by stone tools used by early hominins were found on the [animal] bones. High-precision uranium-lead radiodating  showed the bones were at least 1.95 million years old. ..."

From the abstract:

"The timing of the initial dispersal of hominins into Eurasia is unclear. Current evidence indicates hominins were present at Dmanisi, Georgia by 1.8 million years ago (Ma), but other ephemeral traces of hominins across Eurasia predate Dmanisi. However, no hominin remains have been definitively described from Europe until ~1.4 Ma. 

Here we present evidence of hominin activity at the site of Grăunceanu, Romania in the form of multiple cut-marked bones.

Biostratigraphic and high-resolution U-Pb age estimates suggest Grăunceanu is > 1.95 Ma, making this site one of the best-dated early hominin localities in Europe. Environmental reconstructions based on isotopic analyzes of horse dentition suggest Grăunceanu would have been relatively temperate and seasonal, demonstrating a wide habitat tolerance in even the earliest hominins in Eurasia. Our results, presented along with multiple other lines of evidence, point to a widespread, though perhaps intermittent, presence of hominins across Eurasia by at least 2.0 Ma."

Romanian fossils are earliest evidence of hominins in Europe, predating other finds by half a million years "Analysis of bones butchered by ancient human ancestors shows they represent the oldest direct evidence of hominins in Europe."

Hominin presence in Eurasia by at least 1.95 million years ago (open access)

Fig. 1: Map of fossil localities showing evidence of hominins (either hominin fossils, lithics, or cut-marked bones) in northern Africa and Eurasia prior to 1.0 Ma.

Fig. 2: Selected images of high-confidence cut-marked specimens from the Olteţ River Valley assemblage.