Early humans ‘wiped out by extreme event’ 1.1million years ago after scientists discover long-lost catastrophe
NEW evidence has scientists to believe there was an unknown super cold ice age event that wiped out the first humans earlier than the widely known ice age.
Marine sediment was sampled from the ocean floor off the coast of Portugal and showed there was an abrupt ice age period 1.15million years ago.
The findings were written in a study published in Science on August 11.
Homo erectus is believed to be the first species of human to exist on Earth and their extinction has been somewhat unclear.
Past evidence from fossils shows that Homo erectus arrived in Europe from Asia between 1.8million and 1.4million years ago but it seems as if they died out 1.1million years ago.
It is common belief that an ice age occurred 900,000 years ago but some suggest there was an even colder period before it that would have wiped out Homo erectus.
Although there hasn’t been hard evidence to prove the earlier cold period until now.
“There’s an apparent gap of 200,000 years,” study senior author Chronis Tzedakis, a paleoclimatologist at University College London, told Live Science.
But this gap correlates with the same time period as the new evidence.
The newly found evidence gives good reason to believe that is how Homo erectus went extinct.
Paleoanthropologist Michael Petraglia, director of the Australian Centre for Human Evolution at Griffith University in Brisbane, spoke of the new study and said it “made good sense,” per Live Science.
“The environmental, fossil, and archaeological evidence are in good agreement for regional abandonment, and perhaps even the extinction of early [human] populations,” Petraglia told Live Science.
“This is a story of how climatic variability had profound effects on hominin populations in the past, with implications for all of humanity today who face extreme weather events and changes in ecosystems,” he said.