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Index fossils must have a short vertical range, wide geographic distribution and rapid evolutionary trends. Another term, "zone fossil", is used when the fossil has all the characters stated above except wide geographical distribution; thus, they correlate the surrounding rock to a biozone rather than a specific time period.
Until 2013 with the discovery of the 1.4-million-year-old infant tooth from Barranco León, Orce, Spain, these were the oldest human fossils known from Europe, [25] although human activity on the continent stretches back as early as 1.6 million years ago in Eastern Europe and Spain indicated by stone tools. [26]
Various pre-Indo-European substrates have been postulated, but remain speculative; the "Pelasgian" and "Tyrsenian" substrates of the Mediterranean world, an "Old European" (which may itself have been an early form of Indo-European), a "Vasconic" substrate ancestral to the modern Basque language, [84] or a more widespread presence of early Finno ...
These "dogs" had a wide size range, from over 60 cm (2 ft) in height in eastern Europe to less than 30–45 cm (1 ft–1 ft 6 in) in central and western Europe, [103] and 32–41 kg (71–90 lb) in all of Europe. These "dogs" are identified by having a shorter snout and skull, and wider palate and braincase than contemporary wolves.
An artist's rendering of a temporary wood house, based on evidence found at Terra Amata (in Nice, France) and dated to the Lower Paleolithic (c. 400,000 BP) [5]. The oldest evidence of human occupation in Eastern Europe comes from the Kozarnika cave in Bulgaria where a single human tooth and flint artifacts have been dated to at least 1.4 million years ago.
After 1.5 million years ago (extinction of Paranthropus), all fossils shown are human (genus Homo). After 11,500 years ago (11.5 ka, beginning of the Holocene), all fossils shown are Homo sapiens (anatomically modern humans), illustrating recent divergence in the formation of modern human sub-populations.
Europe is relatively rich in fossils from the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary, and much of what is known about European dinosaurs dates from this time. During the Maastrichtian the end of the Cretaceous dinosaurs were dominating western and Central Europe as the Tremp Formation in Spain dates back to that age.
The fossils and stone tools recovered at Dmanisi range in age from 1.85 to 1.77 million years old, [6] [7] [8] making the Dmanisi hominins the earliest well-dated hominin fossils in Eurasia and the best preserved fossils of early Homo from a single site so early in time, though earlier fossils and artifacts have been found in Asia.