Big update on the Petralona skull from northern Greece! In 2025, Kristoffer Falare & Chris Stringer applied uranium-series dating directly to the mineral crust over the bone, getting ~286,000 years for the first layer, with a working estimate around 300,000 years. Morphologically closest to the Kabwe skull from Zambia.
New uranium-series dating places Petralona skull at approximately 300,000 years
GeorgiaDating
Site mentioned
Key facts
- Skull found at Petralona cave (Chalkidike), Khalkidiki Peninsula, northern Greece, about an hour southwest of Thessaloniki
- In 1959, a shepherd named Filipos Katsares discovered a cave at the foot of Mount Katsika
- In September 1960, villager Christo Saranus found the skull inside the cave, missing its lower jaw and coated in mineral crust
- The skull has a thick cranial vault, heavy brow ridges, and a forward-jutting face; it is not a modern human nor a classic Neanderthal
- Previous published dates ranged from 170,000 to 700,000 years because the cave sediments were disturbed
- In 2025, Kristoffer Falare and Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London applied uranium-series dating directly to the mineral crust over the bone, published in the Journal of Human Evolution
- The first white crust layer dated to 286,000 ± 9,000 years; the full bracket runs from 277,000 to 539,000 years, with a working estimate of around 300,000 years
- The closest morphological match identified by the team is the Kabwe skull from Zambia
Sources
uni-tuebingen.de
Linked in video description
This strange skull has completely baffled scientists for 60 ...sciencefocus.com
Without a firm date for the skull, however, it was difficult to know where it fit into the human story, or even to be certain of its identity at all. The new study applied uranium-series dating to…
New U-series dates on the Petralona cranium, a key fossil in ...hal.science
difficulties in applying 17 physical dating methods to prehistoric samples. Previous results obtained on various types of samples 18 yielded a large age range between about 170.
New U-series dates on the Petralona cranium, a key-fossil for ...sciencedirect.com
In 2019, we decided to resume the dating of the Petralona site in collaboration with the Greek Ministry of Culture, which is responsible for the site. Several calcite samples were collected within…
Petralona Man Skull Mystery Cracked With Uranium-Series Datingpostize.com
For decades, the Petralona Man skull sat at the center of a long-running mystery, like a fossil that refused to give up its secrets. Then a new study pulled a date out of the cave itself, using the…
New U-series dates on the Petralona cranium, a key fossil in ...sciencedirect.com
Here, we present new U-series dates performed on the calcite that grew directly on the cranium, which is the only sample able to provide crucial information on the age of the fossil. The results…
Was this story useful?
Keep exploring
Every site on this page sits on the globe, and the people who research them are on the Discord.
3D Globe · Sites by country · Story Archive · Research Library · Weekly Journal · Search
AI-generated text · images from the original sources · always verify with the sources.