In Spain, a Navarre cave yielded 46,000-year-old Neanderthal hand bones, a regional first

Archaeologists digging in Abauntz Cave in northern Spain have recovered six bones from a Neanderthal who lived about 46,000 years ago. The team says these are the first direct Neanderthal remains ever found in Navarre. Earlier evidence from the cave came only in the form of stone tools, so the bones finally put a Neanderthal body, and not just his toolkit, in this part of the Pyrenees.

A cave on a natural corridor

Abauntz Cave sits in the Ultzama Valley in Navarre, in the western Pyrenees. The researchers describe it as lying along a natural corridor that connects both sides of the mountains. That position matters, because people and animals moving between what is now France and Spain had few easy routes. The cave has a long record of human visits, and it is also known for the Abauntz Map, an engraved stone about 13,600 years old that some researchers interpret as one of the oldest map-like images in western Europe. The Neanderthal find now pushes the story of the site much further back.

What the team found

The find consists of six bone elements: one finger bone from a middle finger, three metacarpals from the right hand, and two more fragments. Researchers identified the two fragments through protein analysis. The bones preserved collagen well, which let the team date them directly with radiocarbon. The result puts the individual at about 46,000 years old. One Spanish report gives a range of 44,000 to 49,000 years, so the exact date carries some uncertainty. Either way, the person lived among the last Neanderthals in this part of Europe, shortly before Homo sapiens replaced them across the continent about 40,000 years ago.

Genetic studies indicate that all six elements come from a single male. That result is still preliminary, because the DNA analysis, run with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the University of Vienna, is still underway. The team has not yet reported what the genome says about this man or his relatives.

What happened after he died

The bones carry small bite marks. The team thinks a small carnivore scavenged the body after death, and says this is the most likely explanation. Many animal bones from the same layer show similar marks, which supports the idea that scavengers worked through the cave floor. The marks tell us about the aftermath, not about how the man died.

Why it matters

Neanderthals disappeared from Europe in a window of a few thousand years, and researchers want to know who the last populations were and how they lived. The team suggests that different Neanderthal lineages may have coexisted in Europe during this late phase. Remains from a site on a Pyrenean corridor could help test that idea, especially once the genetic results arrive. The researchers stress that they expect more insight from further analysis, but they have not reported it yet.

The project co-directors are Andión Arteaga of the University of Warsaw and the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES-CERCA), and Mikel Arlegi of the Musée de l’Homme in Paris. Pilar Utrilla of the University of Zaragoza led earlier excavation campaigns at the cave. The team is still digging and says it hopes to publish the full results in the near future. Until a peer-reviewed paper appears, the details above rest on the researchers’ own announcement.

Sources: IFLScience (21 October 2026), Archaeology Magazine (22 October 2026), and Spanish media coverage of the Government of Navarre’s presentation on 19 October 2026. No journal paper or DOI is available yet. Lead image: right-hand remains from different views, Maria D. Guillén / IPHES-CERCA.