In Song Terus (Java, Indonesia): Homo erectus gave way to Homo sapiens some 80,000 years ago

Abstract

Whether Homo sapiens arrived in Southeast Asia before or after Marine Isotope Stage 5 (130-80 ka) is a hotly debated topic. In this context, the island of Java plays an important role due its rich fossil record spanning 1.8 Ma. Here we present two deciduous teeth discovered in the Song Terus site: a lower left deciduous first molar (ST06) dated back from older than 80 ka and an upper left deciduous first molar (ST04) which is younger than 60 ka. ST04 is compared with Lower to Upper Pleistocene teeth from Sangiran (Java), Tighennif (North Africa), Atapuerca-Gran Dolina (Spain), the Arago cave (France), Neanderthals and H. sapiens. The comparison sample for ST06 comprises Barranco León and Atapuerca-Gran Dolina (Spain), the Arago cave (France), Neanderthals and H. sapiens. Morphological and metrical comparative analysis of the external and internal dental characters were carried out. To reach the inner dental features, the specimens were scanned using a high-resolution micro-CT by the Scanco Medical Micro-CT80 system set at the CENIEH, Burgos, Spain and the software Avizo 7.0 was used to achieve the enamel and the dentine segmentation. Results show that ST04 is closed to H. sapiens while ST06 belongs to H. erectus sensu lato. It confirms that H. erectus survived at least at the beginning of the Late Pleistocene, during the last interglacial period (MIS 5) and that H. sapiens was present in Java at least around 60 ka. It’s interesting to note that in this narrow chronological interval, two other species (i.e. H. floresiensis and H. luzonensis) lived on the surrounding islands and that a faunal turn-over co-occurred.