The oldest non-archaic human remains from Europe are the finds from Peshtera cu Oase (the Cave with Bones) near the Iron Gates in Romania.
The site is situated in the Danubian corridor, which may have been the Early European Modern Human entry point into Central Europe.
The cave itself appears to be a hyena or cave bear den; the human remains may have been prey or carrion.
No tools are associated with the finds.
Oase 1 holotype is a robust mandible combining a variety of archaic, derived early modern, and possibly Neanderthal features.
The modern attributes place it close to European early modern humans among Late Pleistocene samples.
The fossil is one of the few finds in Europe that could be directly dated and is considered the oldest known early modern human fossil from Europe.
Two laboratories independently yielded collagen 14C age averaging to 34,950, +990, and –890, equivalent to about forty-five thousand calendar years.
The Oase 1 mandible was discovered on February 16, 2002.
A nearly complete skull of a young male (Oase 2) and fragments of another (Oase 3) were found in 2005, again with mosaic features, some of which are paralleled in the Oase 1 mandible.
