Scientists are accused of distorting theory of human evolution by misdating bones
It is the world's biggest haul of human fossils and the most important palaeontology site in Europe: a subterranean chamber at the bottom of a 50ft shaft in the deepest recesses of the Atapuerca cavern in northern Spain. Dozens of ancient skeletons have been unearthed. La Sima de los Huesos - the Pit of Bones - has been designated a Unesco world heritage site because of its importance to understanding evolution, and millions of euros, donated by the EU, have been spent constructing a museum of human antiquity in nearby Burgos. But Britain's leading expert on human evolution, Professor Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum, has warned in the journal Evolutionary Anthropology that the team in charge of La Sima has got the ages of its fossils wrong by 200,000 years and has incorrectly identified the species of ancient humans found there. Read more
El 'Homo heidelbergensis' era solo un poco más alto que el neandertal
La reconstrucción de 27 huesos completos de extremidades humanas encontrados en Atapuerca (Burgos) ha servido para determinar la estatura de varias especies del Pleistoceno. Homo heilderbergensis, como los neandertales, tenía una altura similar a la de las actuales poblaciones mediterráneas. Read more (Spanish)