Europe's first humans, a population of the archaic human species Homo erectus, were probably wiped out by an "extreme cooling event" about 1.1 million years ago, a new study finds.
The previously unknown temperature downturn coincides with what's known about human habitation of the continent, the researchers suggest. Fossils and stone tools show that Homo erectus arrived in Europe from Asia between 1.8 million and 1.4 million years ago, previous research has found, but they seem to have died out throughout Europe about 1.1 million years ago.
