Roberts M B, Stringer C B, Parfitt S A
Field Archaeology Unit, University College London, UK.
Nature. 1994 May 26;369(6478):311-3. doi: 10.1038/369311a0.
Fossil hominids from the earlier Middle Pleistocene of Europe are very rare and the Mauer mandible is generally accepted as the most ancient, with an estimated age of 500 kyr. We report here on the discovery of a human tibia, in association with stone tools, from calcareous silts at the Lower Palaeolithic site of Boxgrove, West Sussex, UK (Fig. 1). The silt units are correlated by mammalian biostratigraphy to an, as yet unnamed, major temperate stage or interglacial that immediately pre-dates the Anglian cold stage. Accordingly, the temperate sediments are equated with oxygen isotope stage 13 (ref. 6) and are therefore roughly coeval with the Mauer mandible. The massive tibia is the oldest hominid fragment from the British Isles and provides the first information about the manufacturers of the early Acheulian industries of Europe. It is assigned to Homo cf. heidelbergensis.
欧洲中更新世早期的化石人科动物非常罕见，毛尔下颌骨通常被认为是最古老的，估计年龄为50万年。我们在此报告在英国西苏塞克斯郡博克斯格罗夫旧石器时代早期遗址的钙质粉砂中发现了一根与石器相关的人类胫骨（图1）。通过哺乳动物生物地层学，这些粉砂单元与一个尚未命名的主要温带阶段或间冰期相关，该阶段紧接在安格鲁冰期之前。因此，这些温带沉积物等同于氧同位素阶段13（参考文献6），因此大致与毛尔下颌骨同时期。这块粗壮的胫骨是不列颠群岛最古老的人科动物化石碎片，并提供了有关欧洲早期阿舍利工业制造者的首个信息。它被归类为海德堡人。
