Institute of Geosciences Homo Heidelbergensis
The collection of the Institute of Earth Sciences houses one of the most important finds of mankind: the lower jaw of Homo heidelbergensis.
The 610,000-year-old find was discovered in 1907 in a sand pit near Mauer by the sand pit worker Daniel Hartmann. In addition to the lower jaw, almost 6,000 fossils of vertebrates from the Warm Period in Mauer were discovered. These included individual bones of rhinoceroses, elephants, lions, hippos, bears and deer.
The sensational discovery of that time is now once again the focus of public and scientific interest. The gene sequence of Homo neanderthalensis, which is considered a descendant of Homo heidelbergensis, was decoded in 2010 and traces of it were found in the genome of modern humans.
A small selection of the vertebrate fossils and a copy of the lower jaw are on display in the museum. There are also explanations of the history of the find, the geology of the sand pit and the environment in which the Heidelberg prehistoric man lived.
