TEHRAN - A team of Iranian archeologists have discovered a focalized tooth, believed to be from a Neanderthal kid, in a mountainous area in western Iran, Mehr reported on Sunday.

According to the Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism, the fossil was discovered in Yawan stone hills that is starched across a vast prehistoric area in Kermanshah province.

Saman Heydari-Guran, who leads the team, said the detected object is a milk tooth, belonging to a six-year old Neanderthal kid, which was found along with several stone tools belonging to the Middle Paleolithic period, an era between 125,000 to 40,000 years ago.

Heydari-Guran noted that the tooth is the first of its kind being excavated in the country with a 100-percent certainty of fitting to the Neanderthals.

“Using radiocarbon-14 dating technique, the tooth is estimated to date from 42,000 to 45,000 years ago… So, the kid belonged to the Neanderthal species with features close to modern humans.”

“The recovered tooth is among rare Neanderthal milk teeth that have been found yet across the world,” the archeologist said.

Similar fossils have previously been found in Spain, France and Germany, he added.

Flanked by mountains in the south and north and plains to the east and west, Kermanshah’s history goes very deep in time.

Neanderthals were an extinct species of human beings that was widely distributed in ice-age Europe between c. 120,000–35,000 years ago.

AFM/MQ/MG