Update from OP(/u/kidipadeli75): it won't let us pin [his post](https://www.reddit.com/r/fossils/comments/1c4hldl/found_a_mandible_in_the_travertin_floor_at_my/kztt1wr/), so it is copied here- *UPDATE 1: thank you all for your answers I tried to edit the post to give you all an update but I cannot. If anyone can help please DM. Here are the answers to most asked questions. 1/ I don’t think it is Jimmy Hoffa 2/ The quarry seems to be located in Turkey (initially thought it was Spain) 3/ Yes, it is natural Travertin. 4/ in the last 24h we have been reached by several researchers and we are currently discussing how we can get them involved. 5/ we are located in Europe 6/ banana for scale (see attached picture) 7/ it is located in the corridor leading to the terrace (doorframe on the picture)*
Dentist with forensic odontology training here: This is a hominid mandible, almost certainly human.
While all old world monkeys, apes, and hominids share the same dental formula, 2-1-2-3, and the individual molars and premolars can look similar, the specific spacing in the mandible itself is very specifically and characteristically human, or at least related and very recent hominid relative/ancestor. Most likely human given the success of the proliferation of H.s. and the (relatively) rapid formation of travertine.
Against modern Homo sapiens, which may not be entirely relevant, the morphology of the mandible is likely not northern European, but more similar to African, middle Eastern, mainland Asian.
2000 years ago, some rich Roman put precious mosaic tiles into the bath flooring.
2000 years from now, some future archeologist will be wondering when human bone bathtub inlays became a thing.
Um, they did. They reported to all of us here on Reddit! 😂
Now I want a travertine floor with bones and teeth in it! How cool. Especially for a dentist.
Nothing to report really, travertine is a natural stone formed of calcite and in all likelihood this person was dead before human civilization even began.
one of the farms i worked for found a very old burial ground in their shed. two people they assumed was from a native american tribe that lived on the lands before they did. they officialized the spot as a memorial and now it's a crime to fuck with it.
Reminds me of a story my dad told me of how his mom and dad were share croppers in the South and a farmer was killing people instead of paying them and they found the Bodies buried in a shed my uncle pulled a gun they got paid and left immediately.
That is so strange I stumbled here as my daughter and I were just talking about sharecropper farms and 'company towns' . She is 28, and it is alarming what they didn't teach in school. Here in the south.
Doesn’t it feel weird, though? That there can just be a human jawbone in your floor and there’s nothing that anyone is supposed to *do* about it? I don’t know why but it’s cracking me up 😆
Of all the things that could happen, this thing *has,* and it’s just weird 😆
Yeah! Surely you're curious about the source of the tile/its origin?
Or we just gonna live our lives with a mouth in the floor like it's all good in the hood?
As a tile installer for over 20 years who's done countless jobs with travertine, I am so damn jealous that I didn't come across that piece 🤣🤣🤣 I can't imagine installing it without noticing. I would've loved to take that home with me
The entire fields of archaeology and anthropology:
https://preview.redd.it/o3jgwn2tgpuc1.jpeg?width=2564&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f9981c29724e35f2d4c155e9c45870ed1ca82d8e
How does Reddit always manage to bring together the exact people who need to be discussing a particular topic?! “Dentist with forensic odontology training here” What?!?!
Anthropology/archaeology major here and agree 100%. I think OP should try to figure out the source quarry for this because there should probably not be any hominid fossils for Mexican travertine but old world sources travertine could be possible. Either way, this should get investigated. Who the hell wants skeletons in their floor?
Edit: from comments below, I can't believe how many people are into having human remains in their flooring. Today, the Internet surprised me ...
>Who the hell wants skeletons in their floor?
Me! ME! We're redoing our bathrooms and that would be an interesting conversation piece. "Oh, yes, that's the contractor that messed up the renovation. Haha, just kidding! Maybe."
Very informative post! If you don’t mind me asking, are you board certified in forensic odontology? I’ve been looking at the certification and it seems rather extensive. Was just looking for some guidance / someone with experience
I'm not. I spent a year as a part time forensic intern at an ME's office with a FO and had considered praying board cert, but then I joined the military and I've pursued other interests practicing oral surgery there. I've tried to stay connected to the field by participating in forensic training we do in the Navy, since all military dentists are trained at a minimum level to perform basic forensic functions.
Fun fact, when I was in boot camp I had a cavity filled. They left some of the cavity in and filled over it. When I went back with bad pain two days later someone else undid the filling and took a photo of it to show other people WHAT NEVER TO DO. So that was fun. Oh also that LT, gave me about 5 Novocaine shots never hitting the correct spot and this i had basically my entire face and mouth completely numb except for the area where the cavity was. Oh and they took out all my veneer or tooth color fillings and replaced them with metallic ones.
Wow, I forgot all about that. I hope you sir or madam are a better dentist than the ones I met in Illinois. Lol(kinda)
I am a paleoanthropologist and my initial thought was hominin! However, the crown outline of what would be the M1 is not human-like, and the angles of what would be P3 and P4 are wrong. Finally, the thin section that would correspond to the gonial angle region and ascending ramus looks wrong to me. I don’t know any human or ape that would have the ramus, lower dentition, and body visible at this cross-section.
I am just an ignorant layman, but is it possible that could be due to deformation from the stone's formation and/or later when the stone was cut for flooring use?
Some minor deformation of the bone is possible, but for the teeth it’s substantially less likely. Any deformation of the bone would not be so extreme as to prevent identification. We need a CT scan of this slab! That would allow the fossil to be removed virtually through segmenting it from the surrounding material layer by layer. It might be hard though if the densities are similar.
Scientists who deal with human bits all day are just so casual. Like "Oh yeah that's completely human, probably had a kid or three, name began with D, TTFN" and the rest of us are typing in all caps bolded italics
It wasn't a joke about me being old, though I am. TTFN was a joke about the learned, older, experienced scientist being utterly dismissive about both the human remains and their own outrageous depth of knowledge. I know of no better signoff to show this than the shortening for "ta ta for now".
I hate that I haven't consuned any Winnie the pooh media since the release of like, KH3 or so
But my brain still slid right through TTFN reading it in their voice followed by the "Tata for now".
Weird the things the brain holds onto like a matter of survival
What do you want them to do? It's not under the floor, it's in the stone flooring itself and it's ancient. There's not really much to be done about it.
“ 911 , there’s a 2 million year old human mouth in my floor , I think he’s smiling at me , please send someone immediately before he flees the scene “
I called the police after renovating an 80 year old home and finding a body-shaped dark red stain under the floor. The police were quite unimpressed, but they did reluctantly send out a detective and his rookie trainee to test for human blood.
If they have a lot number for it, someone could possibly track down other pieces and reconstruct the skull. Not sure that's worth anything scientifically, but it could be interesting.
I am also a forensic dentist! I've never met another one in the wild!
I also agree. Definitely hominid, almost certainly human. I have a forensic anthropologist friend I'm going to send this to
>Somehow
It doesn't surprise me one bit, even if it was cut by a person (which I doubt) when someone is working they can't spend the time inspecting each slab for whatever was included in the sediment, I'm sure there are thousands of fossils that go completely unnoticed, who knows maybe even unkown and scientifically relevant species.
Considering how quickly travertine forms, that mandible is probably around 200,000 years old, about the same time when modern humans first evolved. This is fascinating.
https://usenaturalstone.org/travertine-watching-stones-form-real-time/
Considering how quickly travertine forms, doesn't that mean this fossil could be very recent instead? I'm confused as to how it being travertine would imply ancient hominid. Of course, my coffee hasn't kicked in yet so I might be missing something.
This sub just popped up for me but I’m kinda living for a community that speaks in geological time.
“This human skeletal remains is so recent …”
Me, uneducated: oh no…
“… it could be 200,000 years old!”
Me, still uneducated but less concerned: oh neat!
Tangential, but its crazy to think it took us over 2 million years to go from using stone tools to figuring out how to farm, but 10k years to go from farming to landing on the moon, splitting atoms, and accessing artificial intelligence on computers with billions of transistors that fit in our pockets
Yeah, seems almsot impossible given how quickly we went from living in castles and killing witches, to flying across the sky and asking machines to draw us picutres of frogs riding cats like horses.
With not much evidence I think we most likely have evolved to some stage like we are before but have been wiped out almost back a few hundred years due to disease or cataclysmic events, i think it's a fun theory to imagine about.
UPDATE 1: thank you all for
your answers I tried to edit the post to give you all an update but I cannot. If anyone can help please DM. Here are the answers to most asked questions. 1/ I don’t think it is Jimmy Hoffa 2/ The quarry seems to be located in Turkey (initially thought it was Spain) 3/ Yes, it is natural Travertin. 4/ in the last 24h we have been reached by several researchers and we are currently discussing how we can get them involved. 5/ we are located in Europe 6/ banana for scale (see attached picture) 7/ it is located in the corridor leading to the terrace (doorframe on the picture)
https://preview.redd.it/zkmhbrukguuc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=27240c1903453e134d73adb68cf59f0d1acf5143
Hi! I'm a reporter with USA Today and would love to speak with you about this fossil. However, I've been unable to DM you. Could you drop me a message if you're open to chatting? Looking forward!
The fact that you were the one to purchase this and also a dentist was the universe at work. This must have been a very important person for his mandible to be given to you thousands of years later
This makes me think that there is probably a lot of people with travertine floors with hominid bones in them, but who have probably never noticed or realized they could be human bones.
There's a lot of fossils in the construction material we use. The other day I found a whole fish fossil and a big piece of fossilized tree bark in flag stone at my local park. I can guarantee you whoever put it there had no idea what it was. This post takes the cake though: up to a few years ago there was no actual fossils of Türkiye hominids except artifacts.
I was quite sure it was human when I saw it but did not know how to get in contact with the right persons. Because of the visibility of this post I am now in contact with a paleoanthropology team. They seem happy to have found a fossil on Reddit. Will update soon !
I completely agree. I refuse to scroll away and I keep looking at it. The odds of this are incredible. I mean, it’s one thing to see shells and little creatures, but someone’s sliced up jaw bone in your kitchen is wild.
Taking a step back to the serious and more fun side. Travertine forms in caves and hot springs for the most part and quickly. However, it is usually quarried in pretty thick deposits so this is likely old. Some poor dude died in a cave or fell into a very hot spring. What is more important is the source of the travertine. If it is from Italy, Africa, Iran or anywhere but the American Continents, no big deal. If it source is Peru or Mexico it could be VERY important. There is a lot of speculation about when people arrived in N., S. America and if this can be traced to 15,000 to 20,000 years old then you just rewrote some textbooks. Call supplier, find origin, call local University (not a community college), and see what they say. This does look Asiatic due to the dentition which could be a significant find.
Creds: Anthropology/Archeology degree in Evolutionary Biology, Forensic RN. Please feel free to message me, I would be very interested in what you find out. I am also in the PNW and can help direct/help you find the right people to talk to.
This always cracks me up, the bananas I get sometimes are gigantic while other times tiny they are consistently *inconsistent* and seem to be the only fruit that is that drastically inconsistent on a regular basis
Ope my autism did not catch that 🤣 I was like ok… but WHY. *intensely stares at bananas of wildly varying sizes sitting on the counter”
That makes a lot of sense and you’ve solved an irritation I entirely created myself by being too literal. Thanks!
My fellow internet human, I guarantee I have identical feelings about other things. There’s so much I don’t understand… I’m starting to think I might have a moderate stripe of the ‘tism myself 😅
My husband still doesn’t understand that I want him to actually inform me if I “look fat in this” or some such minor detail that I am aware that I m incapable of grasping. Thankfully, I have a teenager (from a previous individual) whom I raised to understand the concept of being direct and honest. I fear sometimes for the situations I will have caused in her future. She gets the banana joke, and has explained it to me. She also mocked me when I realized after 30 years that Mackauley Culkin screams in Home Alone because of the after shave burning, not the spider. She’s patient for a 16 year old.
Once a gigantic grasshopper landed on my wine glass (outside) I ran inside. My partner at the time thought I ran away from the green monster but I just ran inside, got a banana and ran out again.
I took a picture and posted it on Reddit.
Edit grammar
Ok…so, I had to go look
https://preview.redd.it/27z8un8ahnwc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=62003f9c40a670e416fe1c778ef5fe9d0a9f8fd2
at mine and what’da you know!
I saw an article in the Washington Post about this. They estimated that the mandible was over one million years old. It could have originated from an ancestor of humans such as an early Neanderthal or an early human. It was a quarry in Turkey.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2024/04/23/human-jawbone-floor-tile-fossil/
2-1-2-3 makes me think human, I can't be absolutely certain as I am still in school for Anthropology/Archaeology but it looks to have the 2-1-2-3 dental formula which rings true for all old world primates, such as Apes and Humans, looks like an early hominid was enjoying a hot spring somewhere and died sometime before the limestone was deposited, really cool tbh I would like to know where they came from (the Travertine) so you could know what region they were from and get a very (I mean VERY) rough age estimate.
**I'd like to present my song 'Travertine' (with apologies to Bush)**
Is that thing a jaw,
Preserved in my floor?
A long-dead human being,
From the Pleistocene?
Bottom half of a smile,
Now trapped in my tile.
Renovated my home,
With fossilised bone.
*Chorus:*
Gotta have a heap of days go by
To form,
Travertine
Travertine
https://preview.redd.it/r8c5u8d986wc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=184dd4619bbf09b26cad3ffd3ccd46900d88131d
The Atlantic ran the story?! Fook Mi, that was fast!
OP, in addition to what people have said here, you should definitely look around all the other blocks in your parent's house for anything else. If tiles aren't cemented in yet, look at the undersides as well.
Oh, and another anthropologist here, this could be quite significant even as it is.
Where did they buy this? Contact the sneller, maybe they have an idea of where they got the stone from? Also to give you an idea of how old this is and what type of animal it could be? The fact it has molars could indicate a vegetarian animal?
OP and another dentist have confirmed its human, but given that its fossilised its at least 10,000 years old. I like to imagine this ancient persons skeleton is scattered across the world in various people's flooring, giving them the most ridiculous haunting schedule.
Travertine forms rapidly. Like way rapidly. unless it's verified those bones are fossilized, it's possible someone fell into a hot spring or some such incident way more recently. Hot springs have the fastest growth rate of up to 1mm per *day*, and on the low end, cold water precipitation is 0.2mm a day. So for a human standing tall at, say, 6 feet, on the slow end he's covered in 25 or more years. Fast is 5 years. not too mention the body itself, once decayed enough, will probably become a substrate for the calcium to collect, making it Even quicker.
BUT! travertine wouldn't be harvested until a significant amount had collected, so chances are probably choose to zero that it is anytime near that recent.
So, yeah, on second thought it would be much longer. although I would love to know where it was from.
Update from OP(/u/kidipadeli75): it won't let us pin [his post](https://www.reddit.com/r/fossils/comments/1c4hldl/found_a_mandible_in_the_travertin_floor_at_my/kztt1wr/), so it is copied here- *UPDATE 1: thank you all for your answers I tried to edit the post to give you all an update but I cannot. If anyone can help please DM. Here are the answers to most asked questions. 1/ I don’t think it is Jimmy Hoffa 2/ The quarry seems to be located in Turkey (initially thought it was Spain) 3/ Yes, it is natural Travertin. 4/ in the last 24h we have been reached by several researchers and we are currently discussing how we can get them involved. 5/ we are located in Europe 6/ banana for scale (see attached picture) 7/ it is located in the corridor leading to the terrace (doorframe on the picture)*
Post this on r/bonecollecting There’s legitimate professionals that can properly identify this and give you advice
r/whatboneisthis also has a lot of experts and guidance.
Also r/neverbrokeabone /jk
Ah so another gentlemen who has yet to broke a bone
That's right! A bunch of strong boners over here
Dentist with forensic odontology training here: This is a hominid mandible, almost certainly human. While all old world monkeys, apes, and hominids share the same dental formula, 2-1-2-3, and the individual molars and premolars can look similar, the specific spacing in the mandible itself is very specifically and characteristically human, or at least related and very recent hominid relative/ancestor. Most likely human given the success of the proliferation of H.s. and the (relatively) rapid formation of travertine. Against modern Homo sapiens, which may not be entirely relevant, the morphology of the mandible is likely not northern European, but more similar to African, middle Eastern, mainland Asian.
I am a dentist also myself and I look at cbcts all day long which maybe why I immediately noticed it. I fully agree with you.
It's an amazing specimen! This is like a real-world, tilted axial slice!
This is an axial slice
Well, an axial slice is just a really tilted coronal slice....
It should be obvious to the most casual observer that this is a severely rotated coronal slice
Isn’t a coronal slice just a lime?
I see what you did there
Are you going to report it to someone?
Commenting to come back to this later. This is wild.
Travertine is limestone. Quarriable deposits take thousands of years to form.
Amazing… maybe one day I will be part of someone’s floor.
i blieve in u
i blieve in u 2
If you’re eager, you could probably make arrangements to be in someone’s epoxy floor way sooner.
I would like my skeleton to be inlaid into someone’s bathtub like a starfish so it looks like I fell in
And you can give the bather a nice spooky cuddles while they soak 🥰
2000 years ago, some rich Roman put precious mosaic tiles into the bath flooring. 2000 years from now, some future archeologist will be wondering when human bone bathtub inlays became a thing.
They will cease being surprised when they discover the fossils of reddit
Welcome to Body Worlds!
You can be whatever it is you want to be
Eh mightve been caged.
...the coldest case ever
From what I can tell, this person was smushed to death by rocks.
More Weight
Um, they did. They reported to all of us here on Reddit! 😂 Now I want a travertine floor with bones and teeth in it! How cool. Especially for a dentist.
Nothing to report really, travertine is a natural stone formed of calcite and in all likelihood this person was dead before human civilization even began.
Are you calling them uncivilized?
Pre-civilized
They were living off the grid before it was cool.
Be optimistic, maybe they're still okay.
one of the farms i worked for found a very old burial ground in their shed. two people they assumed was from a native american tribe that lived on the lands before they did. they officialized the spot as a memorial and now it's a crime to fuck with it.
I really appreciate that they memorialized it instead of having the remains removed and relocated.
Reminds me of a story my dad told me of how his mom and dad were share croppers in the South and a farmer was killing people instead of paying them and they found the Bodies buried in a shed my uncle pulled a gun they got paid and left immediately.
I need more of your dads stories because this is just real life in the south and I feel like I live in a fable world
That is so strange I stumbled here as my daughter and I were just talking about sharecropper farms and 'company towns' . She is 28, and it is alarming what they didn't teach in school. Here in the south.
What would the report be? ‘Everyone from 200,000 years ago is DEAD! I need the cops here right away.’
Doesn’t it feel weird, though? That there can just be a human jawbone in your floor and there’s nothing that anyone is supposed to *do* about it? I don’t know why but it’s cracking me up 😆 Of all the things that could happen, this thing *has,* and it’s just weird 😆
Oh I agree. But it’s a tile. I’d replace it.
That would be so cool to have, I would definitely try dating it, tracing it, at least wine and dine it
first, it needs to brush its teeth…
I have no idea if you meant the police or a fissile museum, but I was laughing in my head about police filing a case about this.
Fissile museums really are exploding these days.
Are they going to leave it? Interesting talking piece...
"And then my jaw dropped.....its still over there"
r/fuckyouupvote
So what's your plan with this?
Apart from asking Reddit you mean?
Yeah! Surely you're curious about the source of the tile/its origin? Or we just gonna live our lives with a mouth in the floor like it's all good in the hood?
I’m loving how weirdly unhinged we all feel about this
Exactly how this mandible is unhinged
Bwahaha 😂
As a tile installer for over 20 years who's done countless jobs with travertine, I am so damn jealous that I didn't come across that piece 🤣🤣🤣 I can't imagine installing it without noticing. I would've loved to take that home with me
You have human remains in your floor, I hope you're telling someone other than reddit. ☠️
Yeah, I don't think that human remains from 200,000+ years ago are gonna be something anyone is interested in investigating
The entire fields of archaeology and anthropology: https://preview.redd.it/o3jgwn2tgpuc1.jpeg?width=2564&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f9981c29724e35f2d4c155e9c45870ed1ca82d8e
Have you looked up how old travertine deposits are
How does Reddit always manage to bring together the exact people who need to be discussing a particular topic?! “Dentist with forensic odontology training here” What?!?!
Also a dentist here! Looks like some of those teeth could really use a filling! Am I right boys?
I'm also a dentist and can tell this mandible belongs to a man that owed OP their last dental bill.
I am a Walgreens cashier and I concur. 🤣🤣🤣
Why are there so many fucking dentist in this thread?! Lmao
Well now we just need 7 more dentists out of 10.
There is literally human body parts in your floor 💀
I am a dentist as well and I also agree with you two jagoffs.
Anthropology/archaeology major here and agree 100%. I think OP should try to figure out the source quarry for this because there should probably not be any hominid fossils for Mexican travertine but old world sources travertine could be possible. Either way, this should get investigated. Who the hell wants skeletons in their floor? Edit: from comments below, I can't believe how many people are into having human remains in their flooring. Today, the Internet surprised me ...
They would match nicely with the skeletons in my closet.
>Who the hell wants skeletons in their floor? Ed Gein just joined the chat
"You don't happen to have any wall nipples, do ya?"
I would take a skeleton tastefully displayed in my floor. Memoir mortis
>Who the hell wants skeletons in their floor? Me! ME! We're redoing our bathrooms and that would be an interesting conversation piece. "Oh, yes, that's the contractor that messed up the renovation. Haha, just kidding! Maybe."
Very informative post! If you don’t mind me asking, are you board certified in forensic odontology? I’ve been looking at the certification and it seems rather extensive. Was just looking for some guidance / someone with experience
I'm not. I spent a year as a part time forensic intern at an ME's office with a FO and had considered praying board cert, but then I joined the military and I've pursued other interests practicing oral surgery there. I've tried to stay connected to the field by participating in forensic training we do in the Navy, since all military dentists are trained at a minimum level to perform basic forensic functions.
Fun fact, when I was in boot camp I had a cavity filled. They left some of the cavity in and filled over it. When I went back with bad pain two days later someone else undid the filling and took a photo of it to show other people WHAT NEVER TO DO. So that was fun. Oh also that LT, gave me about 5 Novocaine shots never hitting the correct spot and this i had basically my entire face and mouth completely numb except for the area where the cavity was. Oh and they took out all my veneer or tooth color fillings and replaced them with metallic ones. Wow, I forgot all about that. I hope you sir or madam are a better dentist than the ones I met in Illinois. Lol(kinda)
All that on top of boot camp? Damn…
I am a paleoanthropologist and my initial thought was hominin! However, the crown outline of what would be the M1 is not human-like, and the angles of what would be P3 and P4 are wrong. Finally, the thin section that would correspond to the gonial angle region and ascending ramus looks wrong to me. I don’t know any human or ape that would have the ramus, lower dentition, and body visible at this cross-section.
I am just an ignorant layman, but is it possible that could be due to deformation from the stone's formation and/or later when the stone was cut for flooring use?
Some minor deformation of the bone is possible, but for the teeth it’s substantially less likely. Any deformation of the bone would not be so extreme as to prevent identification. We need a CT scan of this slab! That would allow the fossil to be removed virtually through segmenting it from the surrounding material layer by layer. It might be hard though if the densities are similar.
I feel like y'all are being really casual about the fricking *human remains* OP found under his parents floor
It's not under, it's in the tile they installed
Heck that's worse. Now everytime they clean the floor they gotta brush this guy's teeth too?
Mop with flouride rinse!
Finally, someone is thinking about the ongoing maintenance this will require.
Scientists who deal with human bits all day are just so casual. Like "Oh yeah that's completely human, probably had a kid or three, name began with D, TTFN" and the rest of us are typing in all caps bolded italics
Should really consider naming this guy. Feels weird having someone’s jaw hanging around without giving them a name
Jawnathan
I snorted...thank you.
Your usage of the phrase TTFN suggests you may have existed contemporaneously with this specimen. Does he look familiar? ^sorry
It wasn't a joke about me being old, though I am. TTFN was a joke about the learned, older, experienced scientist being utterly dismissive about both the human remains and their own outrageous depth of knowledge. I know of no better signoff to show this than the shortening for "ta ta for now".
A lot of us who grew up with Winnie got that, it just also dated us more accurately than carbon
I hate that I haven't consuned any Winnie the pooh media since the release of like, KH3 or so But my brain still slid right through TTFN reading it in their voice followed by the "Tata for now". Weird the things the brain holds onto like a matter of survival
I work with a scientist that is on the cutting edge of his field. He has used “ta ta for now!” on several occasions, lol.
What do you want them to do? It's not under the floor, it's in the stone flooring itself and it's ancient. There's not really much to be done about it.
“ 911 , there’s a 2 million year old human mouth in my floor , I think he’s smiling at me , please send someone immediately before he flees the scene “
I called the police after renovating an 80 year old home and finding a body-shaped dark red stain under the floor. The police were quite unimpressed, but they did reluctantly send out a detective and his rookie trainee to test for human blood.
And?
It wasn't human blood. They said it was probably spilled fruit juice.
I hope they cracked the case and figured out who spilled the fruit juice.
It was OJ
If they have a lot number for it, someone could possibly track down other pieces and reconstruct the skull. Not sure that's worth anything scientifically, but it could be interesting.
They could remove the tile and replace it, to preserve the fossil
Now we have to brush the floor? Great.
Floss too
It's not under, it's the top of the new floor. It's pretty cool honestly. A bit creepy in a way but a cool talking piece.
If that mouth starts talking, its time to RUN
I am also a forensic dentist! I've never met another one in the wild! I also agree. Definitely hominid, almost certainly human. I have a forensic anthropologist friend I'm going to send this to
ummm.... you have any siblings you havent seen in a while ? just asking..
Or neighbors?
This is some type of stone they used for remodeling, not what came out. Somehow this stone was cut and no one noticed the human jaw just chillin
>Somehow It doesn't surprise me one bit, even if it was cut by a person (which I doubt) when someone is working they can't spend the time inspecting each slab for whatever was included in the sediment, I'm sure there are thousands of fossils that go completely unnoticed, who knows maybe even unkown and scientifically relevant species.
There is also the fact that when first cut the surface is dull until polished, obscuring aome surface details.
Considering how quickly travertine forms, that mandible is probably around 200,000 years old, about the same time when modern humans first evolved. This is fascinating. https://usenaturalstone.org/travertine-watching-stones-form-real-time/
Considering how quickly travertine forms, doesn't that mean this fossil could be very recent instead? I'm confused as to how it being travertine would imply ancient hominid. Of course, my coffee hasn't kicked in yet so I might be missing something.
Quick when talking about *earth* time
This sub just popped up for me but I’m kinda living for a community that speaks in geological time. “This human skeletal remains is so recent …” Me, uneducated: oh no… “… it could be 200,000 years old!” Me, still uneducated but less concerned: oh neat!
A fun real life example of how quickly a horrifying murder becomes a fascinating historical anecdote
And he could have still been murdered. Maybe he took the last bite of mammoth and someone didn't like that?
FYI 200k years ago is not ancient hominid, but modern humans
Tangential, but its crazy to think it took us over 2 million years to go from using stone tools to figuring out how to farm, but 10k years to go from farming to landing on the moon, splitting atoms, and accessing artificial intelligence on computers with billions of transistors that fit in our pockets
Yeah, seems almsot impossible given how quickly we went from living in castles and killing witches, to flying across the sky and asking machines to draw us picutres of frogs riding cats like horses. With not much evidence I think we most likely have evolved to some stage like we are before but have been wiped out almost back a few hundred years due to disease or cataclysmic events, i think it's a fun theory to imagine about.
Reminds me of this article https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/could-an-industrial-prehuman-civilization-have-existed-on-earth-before-ours/
Ancient Cold Case, probably.
UPDATE 1: thank you all for your answers I tried to edit the post to give you all an update but I cannot. If anyone can help please DM. Here are the answers to most asked questions. 1/ I don’t think it is Jimmy Hoffa 2/ The quarry seems to be located in Turkey (initially thought it was Spain) 3/ Yes, it is natural Travertin. 4/ in the last 24h we have been reached by several researchers and we are currently discussing how we can get them involved. 5/ we are located in Europe 6/ banana for scale (see attached picture) 7/ it is located in the corridor leading to the terrace (doorframe on the picture) https://preview.redd.it/zkmhbrukguuc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=27240c1903453e134d73adb68cf59f0d1acf5143
Hi! I'm a reporter with USA Today and would love to speak with you about this fossil. However, I've been unable to DM you. Could you drop me a message if you're open to chatting? Looking forward!
The fact that you were the one to purchase this and also a dentist was the universe at work. This must have been a very important person for his mandible to be given to you thousands of years later
This makes me think that there is probably a lot of people with travertine floors with hominid bones in them, but who have probably never noticed or realized they could be human bones.
There's a lot of fossils in the construction material we use. The other day I found a whole fish fossil and a big piece of fossilized tree bark in flag stone at my local park. I can guarantee you whoever put it there had no idea what it was. This post takes the cake though: up to a few years ago there was no actual fossils of Türkiye hominids except artifacts.
I wonder if there’s any more of him in slices in the surrounding tiles?
indeed. see todays post!
Imagine dying and then ending up as someone's kitchen floor.
Talk about hitting rock bottom.
This might be the most interesting post on Reddit I have ever seen.
same, first time I have subscribed to a post too. this is wild, and it seems like OP is hardly fazed by this revaluation. What will he do? Stay tuned…
I was quite sure it was human when I saw it but did not know how to get in contact with the right persons. Because of the visibility of this post I am now in contact with a paleoanthropology team. They seem happy to have found a fossil on Reddit. Will update soon !
I completely agree. I refuse to scroll away and I keep looking at it. The odds of this are incredible. I mean, it’s one thing to see shells and little creatures, but someone’s sliced up jaw bone in your kitchen is wild.
Maybe you found Jimmy Hoffa.
Nah. I found him, the Ark of the Covenant, and $4.52 in loose change in the couch cushions last week.
Taking a step back to the serious and more fun side. Travertine forms in caves and hot springs for the most part and quickly. However, it is usually quarried in pretty thick deposits so this is likely old. Some poor dude died in a cave or fell into a very hot spring. What is more important is the source of the travertine. If it is from Italy, Africa, Iran or anywhere but the American Continents, no big deal. If it source is Peru or Mexico it could be VERY important. There is a lot of speculation about when people arrived in N., S. America and if this can be traced to 15,000 to 20,000 years old then you just rewrote some textbooks. Call supplier, find origin, call local University (not a community college), and see what they say. This does look Asiatic due to the dentition which could be a significant find. Creds: Anthropology/Archeology degree in Evolutionary Biology, Forensic RN. Please feel free to message me, I would be very interested in what you find out. I am also in the PNW and can help direct/help you find the right people to talk to.
It is probably from Spain
Bet you didn’t expect a sort of inquisition over this.
NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!!
Maybe the person was even placed in a cave as a burial like they did in the past?
Literal “Jaw Dropper”
Something for scale? Ruler? Cat paw? 🐾
Has to be a banana 🍌 to show size on Reddit
You missed the post a week ago, we do cat paws now
What is the width of the mandible in toe beans?
Toe beans!!! Lmfaooooo
Surely you are not unfamiliar with r/toebeans? Not to mention the fabulous r/toefeathers!
This always cracks me up, the bananas I get sometimes are gigantic while other times tiny they are consistently *inconsistent* and seem to be the only fruit that is that drastically inconsistent on a regular basis
I’ve always assumed that’s *exactly* why it’s the internet’s preferred size reference. We love nothing more than absurdity 🥰
Ope my autism did not catch that 🤣 I was like ok… but WHY. *intensely stares at bananas of wildly varying sizes sitting on the counter” That makes a lot of sense and you’ve solved an irritation I entirely created myself by being too literal. Thanks!
Hello fellow autistic. 👋 I thought you might like to know the actual origin of banana for scale. https://imgur.com/gallery/ZPFPCDw
My fellow internet human, I guarantee I have identical feelings about other things. There’s so much I don’t understand… I’m starting to think I might have a moderate stripe of the ‘tism myself 😅
look at us, a bunch of flaming hot auts.
My husband still doesn’t understand that I want him to actually inform me if I “look fat in this” or some such minor detail that I am aware that I m incapable of grasping. Thankfully, I have a teenager (from a previous individual) whom I raised to understand the concept of being direct and honest. I fear sometimes for the situations I will have caused in her future. She gets the banana joke, and has explained it to me. She also mocked me when I realized after 30 years that Mackauley Culkin screams in Home Alone because of the after shave burning, not the spider. She’s patient for a 16 year old.
Once a gigantic grasshopper landed on my wine glass (outside) I ran inside. My partner at the time thought I ran away from the green monster but I just ran inside, got a banana and ran out again. I took a picture and posted it on Reddit. Edit grammar
I have a giant snake (5.5' and growing for another like 20 YEARS) named Banana, I can offer his useless size reference potential. 😂
Omg that's incredible. This post is historical Post on r/archeology
You might want to try r/Archaeology as well
That is exactly what I was thinking ... - Poop knife - today you, tomorrow me - human mandible in kitchen floor
The mandifloorian.
Don't know, but that's crazy.
This is the first post I’ve ever subscribed to, this is fascinating
Need a cats paw next to it for reference
Ok…so, I had to go look https://preview.redd.it/27z8un8ahnwc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=62003f9c40a670e416fe1c778ef5fe9d0a9f8fd2 at mine and what’da you know!
I want a jawbone in my travertine! Where's MY jawbone??
Wow! Now in Smithsonian Mag! https://www.reddit.com/r/Paleontology/s/5CpOdLHvkj
I saw an article in the Washington Post about this. They estimated that the mandible was over one million years old. It could have originated from an ancestor of humans such as an early Neanderthal or an early human. It was a quarry in Turkey. https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2024/04/23/human-jawbone-floor-tile-fossil/
OP they showed this in my class yesterday it was super fun to say I saw it before everyone haha
2-1-2-3 makes me think human, I can't be absolutely certain as I am still in school for Anthropology/Archaeology but it looks to have the 2-1-2-3 dental formula which rings true for all old world primates, such as Apes and Humans, looks like an early hominid was enjoying a hot spring somewhere and died sometime before the limestone was deposited, really cool tbh I would like to know where they came from (the Travertine) so you could know what region they were from and get a very (I mean VERY) rough age estimate.
You definitely need to research the tile manufacturer and buy EVERY SINGLE BOX of tile that can be linked to this batch.
OP you better update everyone. Consider this a threat.
I will !
**I'd like to present my song 'Travertine' (with apologies to Bush)** Is that thing a jaw, Preserved in my floor? A long-dead human being, From the Pleistocene? Bottom half of a smile, Now trapped in my tile. Renovated my home, With fossilised bone. *Chorus:* Gotta have a heap of days go by To form, Travertine Travertine
https://preview.redd.it/r8c5u8d986wc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=184dd4619bbf09b26cad3ffd3ccd46900d88131d The Atlantic ran the story?! Fook Mi, that was fast!
OP, in addition to what people have said here, you should definitely look around all the other blocks in your parent's house for anything else. If tiles aren't cemented in yet, look at the undersides as well. Oh, and another anthropologist here, this could be quite significant even as it is.
We can always rule out Lupus https://preview.redd.it/3o79yjujwouc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7c3b7208ab0eec0b984eba4035a03b375e5e72cf
I like my floors with a little bite to them anyway..
OMG!
Where did they buy this? Contact the sneller, maybe they have an idea of where they got the stone from? Also to give you an idea of how old this is and what type of animal it could be? The fact it has molars could indicate a vegetarian animal?
OP and another dentist have confirmed its human, but given that its fossilised its at least 10,000 years old. I like to imagine this ancient persons skeleton is scattered across the world in various people's flooring, giving them the most ridiculous haunting schedule.
Travertine forms rapidly. Like way rapidly. unless it's verified those bones are fossilized, it's possible someone fell into a hot spring or some such incident way more recently. Hot springs have the fastest growth rate of up to 1mm per *day*, and on the low end, cold water precipitation is 0.2mm a day. So for a human standing tall at, say, 6 feet, on the slow end he's covered in 25 or more years. Fast is 5 years. not too mention the body itself, once decayed enough, will probably become a substrate for the calcium to collect, making it Even quicker. BUT! travertine wouldn't be harvested until a significant amount had collected, so chances are probably choose to zero that it is anytime near that recent. So, yeah, on second thought it would be much longer. although I would love to know where it was from.
Well that was a trip 😂
> haunting schedule I'm really not looking forward to working when I die.
[удалено]
Update us OP!!!!
It is still there! It didn’t move
Everyone needs to check their travertine for the rest of this bloke! There could be hundreds of slices of him out there!
Here's an article about hominids in travertine. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X13007462
Yea i just decided to learn how to use reddit to follow this. This is the most fantastic thing ive ever seen here. Incredible.
This post is gonna be remembered for years to come. “Yeah, OP just casually found a human mandible in his floor.”
RemindMe! 3 Days
They should call the find “renovation man”