Mysterious 300,000-year-old skull is neither human nor Neanderthal: study

It’s a missing link.

A horned hominid skull might sound like something out of Greek mythology, but it actually could be a separate species of human ancestor that lived alongside Neanderthals, according to a groundbreaking study in the Journal of Human Evolution.

“This fossil has a key position in European human evolution,” the researchers wrote.

Originally discovered attached to a wall in Petralona Cave in northern Greece in 1960, the unicorn-esque noggin’s age place our family tree have eluded researchers — until now, Livescience reported.

The Petralona skull, whose origins have eluded researchers for over half a century. Nadina/Wikimedia Commons

These findings align with previous scholarship indicating that the individual lived during the Pleistocene epoch in Europe alongside Nea