560000-Year-Old Human Tooth Discovered by Students

Students have uncovered a 560,000-year-old tooth in a French cave. The new findings could actually be the oldest human remains to be found in France to date.

The tooth was found by students who were working as volunteers in the Arago Cave in Tautavel in southern France. The site is famous for the discovery of the Tautavel Man, which is a specimen of Homo erectus that dates back 450,000 years.

The new tooth is a very worn lower incisor. It's likely that the owner of the tooth lived during a cold and dry period, in which humans hunted horses, reindeer, bison and rhinocerous. While the researchers can't say if the tooth was from a male or female, it's still a major discovery for that area of Europe.

"A tooth can tell us a whole range of things," said Yves Coppens, who was part of the 1970s team that discovered the remains of "Lucy" in Ethiopia, in an interview with France Info radio. "Its shape and wear and tear tells us about the eating habits of the person in question; the tissue reveals a lot of information. The DNA can give an idea as to who this person was."

Older fossils have been found in western Europe. In fact, remains thought to belong to the species Homo antecessor from Spain are estimated to be about 1.2 million years old. With that said, this is still the oldest human remains that have been found in this particular region. In addition, the researchers are hopeful to make further discoveries at this site.

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