Earliest footprints outside Africa discovered in Norfolk

Scientists have discovered the earliest evidence of human footprints outside of Africa, on the Norfolk Coast in the East of England. The footprints are more than 800,000 years old and were found on the shores of Happisburgh. They are direct evidence of the earliest known humans in northern Europe. Details of the extraordinary markings have been published in the science journal Plos One.

The footprints have been described as "one of the most important discoveries, if not the most important discovery that has been made on [Britain's] shores," by Dr Nick Ashton of the British Museum. "It will rewrite our understanding of the early human occupation of Britain and indeed of Europe," he told BBC News.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26025763

It is unclear who these humans were. One suggestion is that they were a species called Homo antecessor, which was known to have lived in southern Europe. It is thought that these people could have made their way to what is now Norfolk across a strip of land that connected the UK to the rest of Europe a million years ago. They would have disappeared around 800,000 years ago because of a much colder climate setting in not long after the footprints were made.

It's weird but I suspect that Firbog and Danaan (spelling?) legends from Ireland come from the last remains of pre Homo sapiens, It makes sense that the far island would have been their last refuge (it was for the Celtic Britons)

  800,000 year old footprints supposedly "human" !!!

NOT BAD when the first humans appeared just over 200,000 years ago !!

I think somebody somewhere along the line added an extra zero in there, somehow ! OR, MORE likely is their plain wrong use of terminology there at the British Museum ~

I believe that those earlier species of mankind's ancestors should more properly be described as pre-human - and the fossils themselves as "possible hominid footprints" !?!   

As stated this is not what we defined as a modern human but an earlier humanoid, one long since extinct would explain the foot prints. Do not forget that the British Isle was once a landmass connected to Europe with lower sea levels

Sorry Bee, you are totally wrong.

Anthropologists and evolutionary biologists from around the UK have been studying the tracks, and believe they may have been related to an extinct form of human ancestor known as Homo antecessor, or "Pioneer Man".

The tracks include up to five different prints, indicating a group of both adults and children walked across the ancient wet estuary silt.

They are the earliest direct evidence of human ancestors in the area and may belong to some of the first ever Britons.

Until now the oldest human remains to be found in Europe all come from around the far south of the continent, including stone tools found in southern Italy and a tooth found in Spain.

Skull fragments from that are around 780,000 years old hominid – the term used by scientists for early humans – were also found in southern Spain.

Previously the oldest evidence of humans in Britain were a set of stone tools dated to 700,000 years ago from near Lowestoft in Suffolk, although more recently stone tools were also discovered at the site in Happisburgh.

Dr Nick Ashton, curator of the department of prehistory of Europe at the British Museum and an archaeologist at University College London, said: “This is an extraordinarily rare discovery.

“The Happisburgh site continues to re-write our understanding of the early human occupation of Britain and indeed Europe.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10623660/900000-year-old-footprints-of-earliest-northern-Europeans-discovered.html

Those footprints seemingly belong to an oversized monkey named 'Techno' by his family a long time ago.