![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/298a8dc5b4556dc131c67914a18ee2fa.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
A partial skull, covered in brown-orange calcite with a partial stalgmite sticking out of its top, sits fused to a cave wall of a similar hue in the Petralona caves in Macedonia, Greece. Image via Nandina\/Wikimedia Commons.<\/p>\n
As Archaeology Magazine explains<\/a>, this bizarre, non-human noggin has fascinated and frustrated scientists ever since it was discovered in 1960, sans lower jaw and encrusted with the mineral calcite, by a villager in the nearby port city of Thessaloniki.<\/p>\n For decades, researchers fiercely debated the age of the skull in hopes of determining what Homo\u00a0genus it came from \u2014 because, as shown below, it doesn’t resemble any other known hominin cranium.<\/p>\n A black-and-white photo of the left side of a skull, known as the <\/p>\n With researchers over the years claiming the skull was anywhere between 170,000 and 700,000 years old based on various dating techniques, scientists have had to rely on the best technology and hypotheses of the era when attempting to figure out when the skull dates from \u2014 and more importantly, who or what creature it came from.<\/p>\n In this new study, the Human Paleontology Institute team, led by archaeologist Christophe\u00a0Falgu\u00e8res, used a remarkably simple technique to offer a more concise time frame for the Petralona skull. Using calcite samples directly from the skull itself and from the deposits surrounding it, the researchers used a technique known as uranium-series dating that measures the decay rate of uranium isotopes as they morph into thorium over time.<\/p>\n In typical outdoor environments, as\u00a0Archaeology Mag explains, uranium is abundant, making the dating technique a non-starter for most materials. Caves, however, are different: as a closed system, water moves through rocks before evaporating, leaving behind uranium-rich calcite deposits whose thorium byproducts can ultimately be aged using this highly accurate radiometric dating technique<\/a>.<\/p>\n Using that methodology, Falgu\u00e8res and his team determined that calcite deposits on the skull started forming at least 286,000 years ago, with a margin of error of about 9,000 years. Ultimately, the French paleontologists determined it could be as young as 277,000 years and as old 539,000, placing it smack-dab in the Middle Pleistocene epoch<\/a> that took place between 773,000 to 126,000 years ago.<\/p>\n In an interview with\u00a0Live Science<\/a> about the research, paper co-writer Chris Stringer of the Museum of Natural History in London said that the new age range for the Petralona skull suggest a “persistence and coexistence of this population alongside the evolving Neanderthal lineage in the later Middle Pleistocene of Europe.”<\/p>\n While it certainly wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen evidence of modern humans and other hominins, including Neanderthals<\/a>, coexisting (and interbreeding<\/a>), these new dates for the Petralona skull offer a more detailed reckoning of our prehistoric past.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/994e9eb8362abe460259024393d7358a.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n