Homo cepranensis

Homo cepranensis is a proposed species of archaic human based on a single skull cap, the Ceprano Calvarium, also called Ceprano Man or Argil, which was accidentally unearthed on 13 March 1994 during highway construction near Ceprano in the Province of Frosinone, Italy. Italo Biddittu recognised and documented the fossil, and Mallegni and colleagues proposed the new species name in 2003. The skull cap was first estimated at 690,000 to 900,000 years old, but a later study that tied it to the nearby Acheulean site of Fontana Ranuccio suggested about 450,000 years. Most researchers now regard it as a form of Homo heidelbergensis with affinities to African forms, or as an early morph of Neanderthal, and a 2017 virtual reconstruction found that its foreshortened vault, the one feature used to define it as a new species, looks typical of Homo heidelbergensis.