Faces from the Past	Volume 50 Number 3, May/June 1997
by Juan Luis Arsuaga Ferreras

Discovered in 1992-1993, skull 5 from the Sima de los Huesos is the most complete premodern human skull ever found; model based on it has receding forehead, broad nose, and swept-back cheeks. (Reconstruction: Raul Romanillos; photographs: Javier Trueba/Madrid Scientific Films) [LARGER IMAGE]

A model based on the reconstruction of skull 5, the best-preserved fossil skull of a premodern human ever found shows, for the first time, just how different from modern humans they were. Found in the Sima de los Huesos or Pit of Bones in northern Spain--one of several sites in the Sierra de Atapuerca--the more than 200,000 year-old skull is the most accurate view of what the early humans who gave rise to the Neandertals looked like.

© 1997 by the Archaeological Institute of America www.archaeology.org/9705/abstracts/atapuerca.html

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