Archaeologists discover a 140,000-year-old sunken world beneath the ocean floor

Deep beneath the sea, off the coast of Indonesia, a discovery is challenging long-held beliefs about early human life in Southeast Asia, said a report by the Daily Galaxy.

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In a stretch of ocean between the islands of Java and Madura, scientists have uncovered the remnants of what they describe as the first underwater hominin fossil site ever found in the region. What they believe they’ve found is more than a collection of fossils—it may be the first physical evidence of the prehistoric continent known as Sundaland, a landmass that once connected much of Southeast Asia during the Pleistocene epoch.

The discovery centers around two skull fragments identified as belonging to Homo erectus, an early ancestor of modern humans. According to ScienceDirect, The bones, buried for more than 140,000 years beneath layers of silt and sand, were recovered from the Madura Strait during marine sand mining operations in 2011. But it wasn’t until recently that researchers, led by archaeologist Harold Berghuis from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, confirmed the age and species of the remains.

A Chance Find Yields Thousands of Fossils