A dentist visiting her parents' newly renovated home made a startling discovery.
Thanks to Reddit user Kidipadeli75's profession, they must have been able to notice a small detail in the freshly laid tile: a jawbone.
“My parents recently redecorated their house with travertine stone, which is a great way to get some of the best fossils out there,” the Redditor posted on the social media platform's subreddit dedicated to fossils. [a] Mandible. Hominidae? Is this common?
The post included a stunning photo that clearly showed the outline of several teeth and the inside of the lower jaw.
The photo quickly caught the attention of social media users and experts in the field, with many agreeing that the tile likely belonged to an extinct hominin (a primate that includes species considered to be human, such as Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis).
If the fossils embedded in the tiles belong to these ancient humans, they could be thousands of years old, more precisely between 24,000 and 1.9 million years old.
As pointed out in the original post, a Reddit user in Europe says that the tiles that an unknown renovator laid in the home's hallway leading to the terrace are made from travertine.
This calcium-rich limestone is cheaper than marble, but is often used for tiles because the veins of calcite crystals give it a beautiful, delicate appearance.
It formed around mineral-rich rivers, lakes and springs, and many humans and animals have lived and died there throughout history.
A jawbone visible on the tile suggests that the person died near a water source and their remains became trapped in the sedimentary rock.
The quarry where the tiles were found is believed to be in Turkey, according to Kidipadeli75. Multiple hominin fossils have been found in the area, according to Angelique Cortals, an associate professor of forensic anthropology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Prof Kortalus told DailyMail.com: “This type of rock has previously yielded fossils of Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis. It could be Neanderthals, it could be anything – any hominin.”
The angle at which the jawbone was cut will probably make it difficult for experts to identify it with certainty as a hominin, but Prof Kortalus said the thickness of the alveolar bone – the bony ridge that supports the teeth sockets – could provide a clue, leading them to think the fossil may be part of a Homo erectus body.
The overall width of the lower jaw also seems more similar to Homo erectus than to Homo sapiens, she added.
Homo erectus is the longest-lived human species, living in East Africa and Western Asia between 1.9 million and 108,000 years ago.
