A dentist was given a huge surprise when he visited his parents’ home and saw a familiar piece of anatomy embedded in the hallway of their newly renovated home.
The freshly laid tile appeared to contain a human jawbone, just inside the threshold leading to the terrace, according to a post on Reddit where he shared the find.
Reddit is full of fake posts, but several experts confirmed to DailyMail.com that this appears to be a real jawbone and that it likely belonged to a modern human (Homo sapiens) or, more likely, an extinct hominin like Homo erectus. or a Neanderthal.
And if the fossil belonged to one of these ancient human ancestors, then it is somewhere between 24,000 and 1.9 million years old.
A Reddit user posted this photo of a jawbone found in his parents’ home. It was embedded
Redditor Kidipadeli75, who said he is a dentist, Posted a photo of the tile on the r/fossils forum.
The tiles in question are made of travertine, a calcium-rich limestone that is often quarried and cut for tiles.
“Although fossils are often found in travertine, hominin fossils are much less common,” archaeologist Kristina Killgrove told DailyMail.com. “This is definitely the lower jaw bone of a hominin, cut straight down the middle somewhere.”
As can be seen in the photo, the jawbone has been cut at an angle. Some cross-sections of the teeth remain on one side, while the teeth on the other side have been cut out, exposing the fossilized interior of the lower jaw.
“I’m not at all surprised that there are bones in this type of rock,” Angelique Corthals, associate professor of forensic anthropology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told DailyMail.com.
‘It’s quite common. What’s unusual is that you’re so lucky to find the human’s embedded jaw,” she said.
Travertine, a common and desirable material for tile, is cheaper than marble, and the veins of calcite crystals give it an interesting appearance.
It occurs near natural springs, including Mammoth Springs in Yellowstone National Park.
Many large and small animals live and die at these sources. And when they die, their remains become stuck in the sedimentary rock until they are dug up to tile someone’s house.
In this case, they ended up at the home of Kidipadeli75’s parents, who had only noticed the jawbone when he pointed it out.
“They chose ‘second choice’ travertine, meaning it has more defects than the first choice, so it would be cheaper and less slippery,” Kidipadeli75 wrote.
Many people must have overlooked the jawbone before it ended up in the tiles of a recently renovated home, Corthals said.
When workers cut the stone at the quarry, and when shopkeepers cut the stone into pieces for tiles, no one tends to pay attention to the fine details, she said. “The sellers of the stone are primarily concerned about the integrity and strength of the stone, and they don’t really care what’s inside.”
Some architects even look to travertine stone for tiles because they tend to contain fossils — but these are usually leaves and insects, Corthals said, and not hominids.
The fossilized jawbone may have belonged to a member of the ancient human ancestor species Homo erectus, which lived between 1.9 million and 108 thousand years ago.
Travertine is a common and desirable material for home tiles. It is cheaper than marble, and the veins of calcite crystals give it an interesting appearance.
Neither Killgrove nor Corthals could say for sure what species of humanoid the jaw belonged to, but Corthals had some ideas.
‘The lower jaw is quite narrow. It could be human, but it looks more like a humanoid,” she said.
‘Fossils of Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis have previously been excavated from this type of rock. It could be Neanderthals, it could be anything. None of the humanoids,” Corthals added.
The tile was mined in Turkey, Kidipadeli75 wrote, and Corthals confirmed that travertine quarries in Turkey have been the site of several hominin finds.
Because of the angle at which the jawbone is cut to create the tile, it can also be difficult for a paleontologist to identify who the tile came from.
However, there are some clues, Corthals said.
She pointed to the alveolar process, the thick ridge of bone that holds the tooth sockets.
At Mammoth Springs in Yellowstone National Park, you can watch travertine form in real time as calcium-rich water deposits its minerals on the surface.
The jawbone in the travertine tile, shown here with a banana for scale. The Redditor’s parents only noticed when he pointed it out.
In modern humans, this part of the bone is not very long from front to back. But this jawbone contains a large amount of material behind the front teeth.
This thickness is more characteristic of the anatomy of the Homo erectus mandible.
“My money is on Homo erectus,” Corthals said. ‘There is much more space there than on Homo sapiens.’
The overall width of the lower jaw also resembles Homo erectus more than Homo sapiens, she added.
If the jawbone belonged to a Neanderthal, it could be between 200,000 and 24,000 years old. And if it belonged to a member of Homo erectus, it could be between 1.9 million and 108 thousand years old.
Jawbones tend to be relatively fragile, Corthals points out, so the fact that they are intact suggests that they were likely fossilized before being embedded in the travertine.
And since the fossils can last a long time, the jawbone is also likely extremely old, she said, making it unlikely that it belonged to a modern human.
So luckily this newly tiled house is probably not a crime scene. But it’s quite a find.