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Journal of Human Evolution 48 (2005) 517e523

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Early Pleistocene ‘‘hominid remains’’ from southern Spain and the taxonomic assignment of the Cueva Victoria phalanx
Bienvenido Martı´ nez-Navarro a,*, Antonio Claret b, Alan B. Shabel c, ´ Juan A. Perez-Claros d, Carlos Lorenzo a,e, Paul Palmqvist d
a

` `ria, Unitat Asociada al CSIC, Universitat Rovira i Virgili. ICREA, Grupd’Autoecologia Humana, Area de Prehisto Placa Imperial Tarraco 1, 43005-Tarragona, Spain ¸ b Instituto de Astrofı´sica de Andalucı´a, CSIC. C/ Camino Bajo de Hue´tor, 24, 18008 Granada, Spain c University of California, Museum of Paleontology, Berkeley, CA 94720, U.S.A. d ´ ´laga. Departamento de Ecologı´a y Geologı´a (Area de Paleontologı´a), Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Ma ´laga, SpainCampus Universitario de Teatinos, 29071-Ma e ´n Centro ISCIII-UCM de Evolucio y Comportamiento Humanos. c/ Sinesio Delgado, 4. 28040-Madrid, Spain Received 21 June 2003; accepted 10 February 2005

Keywords: Theropithecus; Orce; Iberian Peninsula

Introduction Recent paleoanthropological and archaeological work at the gateways of Europe (including the Caucasian Region and the Iberian Peninsula)demonstrates that the northern Mediterranean area witnessed an early Pleistocene human presence (Bermudez de Castro et al., 1997; Martı´ nez´ Navarro et al., 1997; Arribas and Palmqvist, 1999; Gabunia et al., 2000; Oms et al., 2000; Roebroeks, 2001; Mithen and Reed, 2002; Vekua et al., 2002;
* Correspondence and reprints. E-mail addresses: bmarnav@prehistoria.urv.es (B. Martı´ nezNavarro),claret@iaa.es (A. Claret), shabel@berkeley.edu (A.B. ´ Shabel), johnny@uma.es (J.A. Pe rez-Claros), clorenzo@ prehistoria.urv.es (C. Lorenzo), ppb@uma.es (P. Palmqvist).

´ Dennell, 2003; Anton and Swisher, 2004). During the last decades, however, an intense controversy over several fossil specimens found in southeastern Spain at Orce and Cueva Victoria (Fig. 1) have seriously confounded this debate,rendering dubious the hypothesis of an early human occupation of this area. The controversy has overshadowed the evidence from the extensive lithic assemblages ´ from Fuente Nueva-3 (FN-3) and Barranco Leon5 (BL-5) in Orce, which include more than fourteen hundred pieces of limestone cobbles and knapped flint associated with a faunal assemblage of early Pleistocene mammals (Martı´ nez-Navarro etal., 1997, 2003; Oms et al., 2000). The four putative ‘‘hominid’’ remains from the Orce region, a skull fragment (VM-0) and two

0047-2484/$ - see front matter Ó 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2005.02.003

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B. Martı´nez-Navarro et al. / Journal of Human Evolution 48 (2005) 517e523

´ Fig. 1. Geographic location of the Orce sites (Venta Micena, FuenteNueva-3, and Barranco Leon-5) and the Cueva Victoria site on the southeast Iberian Peninsula.

Fig. 2. The phalanx CV-0 from Cueva Victoria. From left to right: (top row) dorsal view, lateral internal view, plantar view, lateral external view; (bottom row) proximal view and distal view. The proximal view shows the absence of the proximal articulation facets. Scale in cm.

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humeral fragments (VM-1960 and VM-3691) from Venta Micena and a tooth fragment (BL5-0) from ´ Barranco Leon, have been extensively published, but none of them has been accepted as an unequivocal human fossil. In fact, VM-0, the most famous and controversial specimen, has already generated eight articles in peer-reviewed journals, as wellas many other publications in other journals and edited books. However, this cranial fragment has recently been ascribed to a female individual of a large ruminant that lacked cranial appendages (Martı´ nez-Navarro, 2002). The ‘‘hominids’’ of Cueva Victoria Three fossil bones from the karstic site of Cueva Victoria (w1.0 Ma) have also been attributed to the genus Homo. Two of them are distal...