Out of the North Sea: the Zeeland Ridges Neandertal Jean-Jacques Hublin a, * , Darlene Weston b, a , Philipp Gunz a , Mike Richards a , Wil Roebroeks c , Jan Glimmerveen c , Luc Anthonis d a Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany b Barge’s Anthropologica, Department of Anatomy and Embryology, Leiden University Medical Centre, P.O. Box 9600, 2300 RC Leiden, The Netherlands c Leiden University, Faculty of Archaeology, P.O. Box 9515, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands d St.-Jozefcollege, Koningin Astridlaan 33, 2300 Turnhout, Belgium article info Article history: Received 31 December 2008 Accepted 10 August 2009 Keywords: Pleistocene Hominins Europe Middle Palaeolithic Neandertal North Sea abstract In 2001, a portion of human frontal bone was discovered in sediments extracted from the bottom of the North Sea, 15 km off the coast of the Netherlands. The extraction zone is located in the so-called Zeeland Ridges area located at 51  40 0 northern latitude and 3  20 0 eastern longitude. The specimen was dredged up from sediments containing Late Pleistocene faunal remains and Middle Palaeolithic artefacts, including well-finished small handaxes and Levallois flakes. The details of the supraorbital morphology, as well as the quantitative assessment of the shape of the external surface of the squama using tradi- tional and 3D geometric morphometrics, unambiguously assign the Zeeland Ridges frontal bone to Homo neanderthalensis. Carbon and nitrogen isotopic analysis indicate that the Zeeland Ridges hominin, like other Neandertals, was highly carnivorous and does not show evidence for the consumption of aquatic foods. A lesion on the outer table and diploic layer of the bone in the area of the supratoral sulcus can be interpreted as the result of an intradiploic epidermoid cyst, a type of neoplasm diagnosed for the first time in Neandertal remains. So far, the Zeeland Ridges Neandertal is the first Pleistocene fossil hominin found under seawater and the first recorded in the Netherlands. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction For most of the Pleistocene, substantial areas of the current North Sea were dry land, characterised by extensive river systems with wide river valleys and floodplains (Gibbard, 1988). These areas constituted rich habitats for large herds of herbivores and the animals that preyed upon them. The relatively shallow (< 50 m deep) southern bight of the North Sea is one of the richest fossil- bearing localities worldwide, with tons of Pleistocene mammal fossils brought ashore every year. These faunal remains are retrieved by the fishing industry, by aggregate companies, and during dredging operations related to the maintenance of naviga- tion routes, for example the approach to Rotterdam Harbor (Mol et al., 2006). Middle Palaeolithic as well as Mesolithic and a few Neolithic artefacts have been found in this context (Glimmerveen et al., 2004; Verhart, 2004), but no Pleistocene human material has been reported thus far, in one and a half centuries of ‘‘fishing for fossils.’’ Here, we report the find of a human skull fragment off the Dutch coast, recovered from the sieving debris of a shell extraction company. Together with the large amount of Pleistocene mammal fossils and the palaeoenvironmental evidence retrieved from below the waters of the North Sea, this discovery illustrates the palae- oanthropological potential of the northwestern part of the Euro- pean continental shelf. Geological context and discovery At several locations in the North Sea, shells are extracted for use as pavement or insulation material, and one of the most productive areas is in the Zeeland waters, off the coast of the southwestern Netherlands. Shell-rich sediments extracted from the bottom of the North Sea are brought ashore and sieved to separate the shells from other materials, including stones, wood, and fossils. The sieving residue is screened by local amateur archaeologists and palae- ontologists, who have retrieved a rich assemblage of Pleistocene fauna from the residue heaps as well as Middle Palaeolithic flint artefacts and more recent archaeological material (Glimmerveen et al., 2004; Verhart, 2004). It is from this sieving debris that, in 2001, one of us (Luc Anthonis) recovered the fossil human fragment described here. Information obtained from the extraction company shows that the deposits containing the fossil specimen must have been * Corresponding author. E-mail address: hublin@eva.mpg.de (J.-J. Hublin). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Human Evolution journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jhevol ARTICLE IN PRESS 0047-2484/$ – see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2009.09.001 Journal of Human Evolution xxx (2009) 1–9 Please cite this article in press as: Hublin, J.-J., et al., Out of the North Sea: the Zeeland Ridges Neandertal, J Hum Evol (2009), doi:10.1016/ j.jhevol.2009.09.001