Ongoing research on early modern human fossil remains across the Old World is documenting that they exhibit a complex mix of derived modern human features and variable archaic features retained from earlier late archaic humans. However, the sample size of early modern humans securely dated to more than 28,000 years ago is small, and it has grown smaller as a result of the recent direct dating of a number of purportedly early specimens to within the past 10,000 years. In the context of this, two important samples from Romania, the isolated skull from Pestera Cioclovina and the partial skeleton(s) from Pestera Muierii become important, since they are directly radiocarbon dated to 29,000 and 30,000 years ago respectively. Since the former is minimally described and the latter undescribed, the researchers propose to provide a detailed morphological and paleobiological analysis and description of these important early modern human fossils, in the context of additional direct dating of the human remains and associated archeological and non-human paleontological remains. The research will provide a firmer chronological and archeological context for these important human remains, testing whether they are associated with Aurignacian remains from the same sites. It will also generate detailed paleontological data for their integration into the corpus of information relating to the emergence of modern humans, their dispersal in time and space and their biology. The resultant dating and paleontological analyses will provide significant data for a critical period in the emergence and dispersal of modern humans, data which can be used to evaluate ongoing scenarios concerning the chronology of modern human emergence, modern human phylogenetic origins, ongoing issues of modern human biological distinctiveness, the behavioral and subsistence nature of dispersing early modern human populations, and the background for ongoing modern human biological evolution.
The study of modern human emergence in the Late Pleistocene is a topic of widespread public (as well as academic) interest, as is witnessed by the global media coverage of new human paleontological discoveries and novel analyses which provide insight into the events, patterns and processes of our evolutionary history. This is evident in the recurrent global media coverage of each new discovery or revealing analysis. The proposed dating and analyses of the Cioclovina and Muierii human fossils will serve to foster this interest, which is ultimately related to concerns about our place in nature and the evolutionary roots of modern human biology and diversity. The research will also help to foster international scientific collaboration and infrastructural support in Romania, a country which is scientifically and economically still recovering from its political past, despite the efforts of many members of its scientific community. And since two of the personnel are doctoral candidates in Romania, it will contribute to their educational formation, and enhance the programs at their respective scientific institutions in Bucharest.
