A dentist visiting his parents' home spotted a jaw-dropping finding in the travertine tile that was installed in the newly renovated home -- a human jawbone.
The tile appears to contain a human jawbone in a section of tile that was installed near the home's terrace entrance. The image was captured and posted on Reddit by Kidipadeli75, who said he is a dentist.
"My parents just got their home renovated with travertin stone. This looks like a section of mandible. Could it be a hominid? Is it usual?" Kidipadeli75 wrote.
Found a mandible in the travertin floor at my parents house
byu/Kidipadeli75 infossils
The image Kidipadeli75 captured shows an angled cross-section of a mandible, with teeth showing on one side. The jawbone may belong to an extinct hominin such as Homo erectus or a Neanderthal, some have postulated.
"While fossils are often found in travertine, hominin fossils are much less common," archaeologist Kristina Killgrove said in a DailyMail.com article. "This one is definitely a hominin's lower jaw bone, cut transversely somewhere through the middle."
The travertine stone in question was mined from a quarry in Turkey, according to a subsequent post by Kidipadeli75.
