This time last year, science news headlines blared a spectacular claim – the first members of our species evolved 200,000 years earlier than previously thought. The evidence consisted of a small collection of teeth. Discovered in roughly 200,000 to 400,000 year old deposits in Israel’s Qesem Cave, these fossils were said to herald the archaic beginnings of our own species. We didn’t evolve in Africa, reports claimed, but got an earlier start along the eastern border of the Mediterranean in the Levant.

Now I feel as if it’s 2010 again. Earlier this month Gopher joined co-authors Miki Ben-Dor, Israel Hershkovitz, and Ran Barkai in publishing a new paper on the Qesem Cave teeth. Only it wasn’t framed that way. Titled “Man