The findings on this subject 199 were rejected by some
evolutionist paleoanthropologists, because of their damaging
implications for the evolutionary family tree. One fossil
discovered in Atapuerca in Spain in 1995 revealed in a most
striking manner that H. sapiens was far older than had been
thought. (See Atapuerca.) This fossil indicated that the history
of H. sapiens needed to be put back to at least 800,000 years
ago. However, once they had got over their initial shock,
evolutionists decided that the fossil belonged to a different
species, because—according to the evolutionary family tree—H.
sapiens could not have been alive 800,000 years ago. They
therefore came up with an imaginary species known as Homo
antecessor, to which they ascribed the Atapuerca skull. 199
L.S.B. Leakey, The Origin of Homo sapiens, ed. F. Borde, Paris:
UNESCO, 1972, pp. 25-29; L.S.B. Leakey, By the Evidence, New
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974.2009-08-15 14:44:53