Team Discovers Oldest European Site Occupied by Early Humans 

BCC Biological Sciences Department Chairperson, Chris Robinson, was part of a research team led by Dr. Sabrina Curran in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Ohio University. The team found evidence of early human (or hominin) activity at a Romanian fossil site dating to at least 1.95 million years ago, pushing back the earliest known date of European hominins by half a million years. 

Robinson was one of the co-directors of the project, which began about a decade ago to better understand what the environment was like in Romania when early humans were first dispersing out of Africa. The team, along with Romanian colleagues, received grants from multiple agencies, including the National Science Foundation, to fund the exploration. 

“My contribution was to help identify what different animal species were present in Romania at this time,” Robinson said. “We can use this information not only to understand more about the environment in this area (because certain species of animals are found only in certain types of environments), but also to help determine how old the site was since some species of animals were only alive during certain time periods.” 

Robinson often shares his work with his students at BCC and has presented as part of the College’s Biological Sciences Speaker Series. He was able to share preliminary results of this latest study with his students prior to the work being published.  

Read More about the research in Discover Magazine.