Western Europe has a new contender for its oldest known human relative. Spanish scientists revealed on Wednesday that facial bones belonging to an individual nicknamed ‘Pink’ may represent a previously unidentified member of the human family who lived over 1.1 million years ago.
Previously, the oldest-known human species in Western Europe was Homo antecessor, a slender-faced hominin dating back approximately 850,000 years.
However, new research published in the journal Nature ‘introduces a new actor in the history of human evolution in Europe’, said Rosa Huguet, the lead study author from Spain’s University of Rovira i Virgili, during a press conference on Wednesday.
The fossilised upper jawbone and part of the cheekbone were unearthed in 2022 at the Atapuerca archaeological site – a UNESCO World Heritage site in northern Spain.
Since the discovery, a team of Spanish researchers has been working to uncover more details about Pink, whose nickname pays tribute to the progressive rock band Pink Floyd.
The remains were found 16 metres deep in a layer of silt and red mud at a site called Sima del Elefante, or ‘elephant pit’.
The Atapuerca cave complex has already provided significant insights into ancient human history. The bones of ‘Pink’ were located less than 250 metres from where Homo antecessor fossils – previously the oldest in Western Europe -were discovered nearly 20 years ago.
However, the record for the oldest known human in all of Europe still belongs to the Dmanisi people, also known as Homo georgicus, who lived around 1.8 million years ago in present-day Georgia. These early hominins were the first known to migrate to Europe from Africa, the birthplace of humanity.
Modern Homo sapiens did not appear in Africa until roughly 300,000 years ago -and took their time before arriving in Europe.
Using advanced 3D imaging technology, the researchers reconstructed what Pink’s full face may have looked like.
According to María Martinón-Torres, director of Spain’s National Research Centre on Human Evolution, Homo antecessor had a ‘very modern’ face that was ‘vertical and flat’, resembling that of contemporary humans.
In contrast, Pink’s facial structure was ‘projected forward and more robust’, bearing some similarities to Homo erectus, though not enough to classify Pink within that species definitively.
Given the uncertainty, the researchers proposed a new name for the potential species: Homo ‘affinis’ erectus. ‘This is the most honest proposal we can make with the evidence we have,’ said Martinón-Torres.
Due to the limited remains, the team could not determine Pink’s age or gender. However, by examining small stone tools and animal bones found nearby, they were able to reconstruct aspects of the environment Pink inhabited.
At the time, the region was a humid forest teeming with wildlife such as horses, ancient cattle, monkeys, and even hippos. The area, rich in water sources, likely served as an ‘ideal’ settlement for early humans, Huguet said.
The discovery supports the theory that early humans migrated westward into Europe at least 1.4 million years ago. If Pink indeed represents an unknown species, it may have acted as a transitional link between the Dmanisi hominins and Homo antecessor, the researchers suggested.
However, this finding also raises new questions – most notably, what happened to Pink’s people?
José María Bermúdez de Castro, a Spanish paleoanthropologist and co-author of the study, speculated that the population Pink belonged to might not have survived a dramatic human ‘bottleneck’ caused by global cooling approximately 900,000 years ago. ‘I think that Homo affinis erectus probably disappeared,’ he said.
Further excavations are planned to uncover more clues, as the team has yet to reach the bottom of the elephant pit or fully explore surrounding sites.
En el MEH contamos con varios fósiles también hallados en el yacimiento de la Sima del Elefante. Por ejemplo, en la exposición temporal ‘Las manos mágicas’ se expone la falange proximal de un dedo hallado en el nivel TE 9 de la Sima del Elefante de 1.2 millones de años. Hilo 👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/pTksF4sDvK
— MuseoEvoluciónHumana (@museoevolucion) March 13, 2025
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