Homo antecessor

Homo antecessor is known from the Gran Dolina cave in the Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain. Excavations in 1994 revealed bone fragments from at least six individuals, in a layer dated to roughly 850,000 to 950,000 years ago, and in 1997 the team led by Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro, Juan Luis Arsuaga and Eudald Carbonell named the species. The Latin name means 'pioneer' or 'predecessor'. The cave was exposed when workers cut a railway trench through the hill in the 19th century. The most famous fossil, the face of a boy of about 10 or 11, looked surprisingly modern, with a flat, retracted midface.

Many bones carry cut marks and were broken open for marrow in the same way as animal bones, the earliest well-documented evidence of cannibalism in the human lineage. Experts debate whether this reflected hunger, ritual or conflict. The species' place on the family tree is also debated. The team first proposed it as a common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans, but in 2020 an analysis of ancient proteins from a tooth placed antecessor on a sister branch to the group containing Neanderthals, Denisovans and us, rather than directly ancestral. Its face shows that modern-looking features appeared in a patchwork rather than all at once.