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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.
In the early Miocene, Europe had a subtropical climate and was intermittently connected to Africa by land bridges. At the same time, Africa was becoming more arid, prompting the dispersal of its tropical fauna—including primates—north into Europe. [6] Apes first appear in the European fossil record 17 million years ago with Griphopithecus. [7]
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 ...
The expansion of early modern humans from the Levant where the Levantine Aurignacian stage has been identified. The Aurignacian (/ ɔːr ɪ ɡ ˈ n eɪ ʃ ən /) is an archaeological industry of the Upper Paleolithic associated with Early European modern humans (EEMH) lasting from 43,000 to 26,000 years ago.
The evidence of fossil flora and fauna using indicators such as the fossilized teeth of voles, which provide very accurate dating evidence, pushes the lower limit back to at least 840,000 years ago. On this basis, the range of possible dates for the deposition of the sediments that the footprints were found in stretches from 850,000 to 950,000 ...
The history of paleontology traces the history of the effort to understand the history of life on Earth by studying the fossil record left behind by living organisms. Since it is concerned with understanding living organisms of the past, paleontology can be considered to be a field of biology, but its historical development has been closely tied to geology and the effort to understand the ...
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]
The finding of the first Cro-Magnon in 1868 led to the idea that modern humans had arisen in Europe. Some French archaeologists at the time were even ready to declare France the cradle of humanity. [15] Craniometric characteristics of the Grimaldi remains shared certain similarities to tropical African but also European features.