Homo antecessor

Just three decades ago, few could imagine that a human species found and named in the Iberian Peninsula by Spanish scientists would have the honor of being part of our evolutionary history. The species Homo antecessor, whose remains were discovered in a site in the Atapuerca mountain range, was described in 1997 in the magazine Science. The process, which lasted three years, was not free of great difficulties unrelated to the investigation itself. However, the excitement of each new discovery and the surprising anatomy of the fossil remains were an incentive to overcome all obstacles. Once the first obstacle was overcome, the acceptance of Homo antecessor as a transcendental source for understanding the origin of the lineage of our species ran into opposition from a good number of experts in human evolution. The resistance lasted more than twenty years, until anatomical and molecular information imposed its logic.