Saturday Science: We're Everywhere -- Earlier Than You Thought

as in, foraging on the banks of a river that may have been the Thames between 800,000 and 1 million years ago:

They were a British family on a day out — almost a million years ago.

Archaeologists announced Friday that they have discovered human footprints in England that are between 800,000 and 1 million years old — the most ancient found outside Africa, and the earliest evidence of human life in northern Europe.

A team from the British Museum, London's Natural History Museum and Queen Mary college at the University of London uncovered imprints from up to five individuals in ancient estuary mud at Happisburgh on the country's eastern coast.

British Museum archaeologist Nick Ashton said the discovery — recounted in detail in the journal PLOS ONE — was "a tangible link to our earliest human relatives."

Preserved in layers of silt and sand for hundreds of millennia before being exposed by the tide last year, the prints give a vivid glimpse of some of our most ancient ancestors. They were left by a group, including at least two children and one adult male. They could have been be a family foraging on the banks of a river scientists think may be the ancient Thames, beside grasslands where bison, mammoth, hippos and rhinoceros roamed.

I don't know about you, but I just never think about human beings, in at least an ancestral form, being that far north that early. I still tend to think of Olduvai Gorge in that time period, although I certainly know better -- Homo erectus was running around China and Southeast Asia a million years ago, so why not some species of Homo in England?

This is intriguing:

The researchers said the humans who left the footprints may have been related to Homo antecessor, or "pioneer man," whose fossilized remains have been found in Spain. That species died out about 800,000 years ago.

A whole new human species I'd never heard of. I've obviously not been keeping up in the field.

There's a photo at the link, but it's not real clear -- but after 800,000 years, what could we expect?

Via Slashdot.