Tuesday 13 September 2022 08:31 PM World's oldest TOOTH outside Africa: Student digs up 1.8million-year-old molar ... trends now
View
comments
A human tooth dating back 1.8 million years unearthed in the country of Georgia is being celebrated as one of the oldest evidence of hominins, an early species of human, outside of Africa.
It is the fourth premolar of the mandible of what archaeologists suspected once belonged to an adult of the Homo erectus species, which is the first of our ancestors to have human-like body proportions.
The tooth was found by British archeology student Jack Peart who was working outside the village of Orozmani. The excavations also uncovered bones of extinct animals, stone tools and lithic flakes, which are left over from rocks made into tools.
Giorgi Bidzinashvili, the scientific leader of the dig team, said he considers the tooth belonged to a 'cousin' of Zezva and Mzia, the names given to two near-complete 1.8-million-year-old fossilized skulls found at Dmanisi.
The tooth is the oldest to be found outside of Africa. Experts say it belonged to an adult Homo erectus that lived 1.8 million years ago
Dmanisi is where human skulls dating to 1.8 million years ago were found in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Homo erectus is said to have migrated out of Africa, about two million years ago, using a corridor that led to Eurasia.
'The implications, not just for this site, but for Georgia and the story of
