Fragments of a human skull may reveal the secrets of an ancient land, ruled by venomous Komodo dragons.
The 140-000-year-old bone fragments were discovered buried in a now-submerged land in Indonesia.
They were found by accident among thousands of animal fossils when tonnes of sand and stones were dredged up off the seafloor of the Madura Strait, a stretch of sea between Java and Madura island.
Marks found on the fossils suggest that the Homo erectus might have used a hunting strategy copied from its more modern human relatives, signalling a further overlap and interaction between the two species.
The skull was buried 140,000 years ago, and it could be the first evidence of the prehistoric landmass known as Sundaland, Live Science reports.
The bombshell discovery, published last week in the Quaternary Environments and Human journal, reveals how a previously unknown Homo erectus population may have interacted with more humans across the strip of land, which connected the islands.
The fossil markings suggest that the Homo erectus in the area were targeting a prehistoric, cow-like animal in a way the species isn’t usually known for, suggesting they were copying humans from the mainland.
The findings suggest that early humans lived side-by-side with the Komodo dragons, which have a poisonous bite and are capable of killing large mammals.
Harold Berghuis, the lead author of the study at the University of Leiden, Netherlands, told Live Science: ‘The Madura Strait hominins may have developed this hunting strategy independently.
‘But the other possibility is that we are looking at a kind of cultural exchange.’
After sifting through the debris, the researchers found more than 6,000 animal fossils – the first time fossils have been found from the submerged Sundaland.
The area used to look very different when human ancestors walked and hunted in the area during the last Ice Age.
Sundaland was the home to elephants, the elephant-like extinct Stegodon and water buffalo, while its rivers were teeming with fish, turtles, river sharks and hippos, the fossils show.
The researchers identified 36 different species among the over 6,000 fossils, including Komodo dragons, which could have been ‘the most important predators’ in Sundaland, Berghuis said.
But the pre-historic human remains could have been lost forever when a massive construction project started in the strait to create an artificial island.
Diggers pulled up around 177 million cubic feet of sand and sandstones near Surabaya between 2014 and 2015, which was then used the create the island.
Berghuis then spent weeks on his hands and knees searching for any human-linked fossils. He finally hit the jackpot on his last day at the site.
He said: ‘It was already getting dark and I sat down to enjoy [the] sunset.
‘And then, right beside me, lay this fossil that reminded me so much of the only Dutch Neanderthal. This is a well-known fossil in my country, dredged from the North Sea.’
The human predecessor was the first to develop a humanlike body and leave the African continent for Asia and Europe during its 2 million-year existence.
As its name suggests, Homo erectus walked upright, although the teeth were larger and the brain smaller than in modern humans.
Homo erectus is thought to be the first human species to have used fire around 1 million years ago.
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