Dentist spots shocking find in parents' renovated home: An ancient human mandible

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.

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