The tooth belonging to one of the earliest human species to live in Europe has been discovered by a teenager in a French cave.

Anthropologists have described the adult tooth, which is thought to be between 550,000 and 580,000 years old, as a 'major discovery'.

It was found embedded in the rocky soil on the floor of the Arago Cave in Tautavel in the Pyrenees-Orientales area of southern France, by a 16-year-old volunteer archaeologist.

A tooth discovered in a cave in the Pyrenees of southern France has been found to be between 550,000 and 580 years old. It is thought to belong to one of the earliest human species to live in Europe, Homo erectus

Camille Jacquey discovered the tooth while brushing away the sandy soil that has filled the floor of the cave.

The cave is the same site where the remains of two 450,000-year-old early humans – a male and a female - from a species called Homo erectus were found around 46 years ago.

WHO WAS TAUTAVEL MAN? The Arago cave is thought to have been occupied sometime between 600,000 and 400,000 years ago and is the earliest known human site in the Pyrenees. Tools including scrapers and choppers have been found in the cave but perhaps most significantly were the fossilised remains of two Homo erectus adults. The male, believed to be around 20, and female, aged between 40 and 55, are thought to have lived in the cave around 450,000 years ago. They are thought to have eaten elk, fallow deer, reindeer, musk ox and bison. Analysis of the animal bones have allowed anthropologists to estimate the inhabitants hunted up to 21 miles away and collected stone for tools from 3.1 miles away. Advertisement

Dr Amelie Viallet, a palaeoanthropologist with the Institut de Paléontologie Humaine in Paris who has been leading the excavation, said the new find predated that by more than 100,000 years.

It suggests the cave had been inhabited by early humans for far longer than had originally been thought.

Dr Viallet said: 'A large adult tooth - we can't say if it was from a male or female - was found during excavations of soil we know to be between 550,000 and 580,000 years old, because we used different dating methods.

'This is a major discovery because we have very few human fossils from this period in Europe.'

The cave in Tautavel has been excavated for around 50 years after flint stone tools were discovered in the cave.

The remains of a female Homo erectus, believed to have been in her forties, were found in 1969 and the remains of a man aged around 20 were later uncovered in 1971.

Stone tools and animal bones also found at the cave have suggested the people who lived there, nicknamed Tautavel man, ranged for up to 30 miles in search of food and resources.

The badly worn incisor was found embedded in the rocky soil inside the Arago cave in Tautavel by a teenager taking part in a summer excavation. Experts believe it came from an adult but cannot determine the gender

The tooth was discovered by volunteer archaeologist Camille Jacquey, shown right in the image above, and Valentine Loescher, shown on the left holding the tooth, while taking part in an excavation of the cave

The Arago Cave is on the outskirts of Tautavel in south east France, as shown on the map above

The discovery of the new tooth, which was badly worn indicating it belonged to a relatively old adult, now shows these early humans were using the cave far earlier than had been imagined.

The remains, however, are not the oldest human fossils to be discovered in western Europe as a jawbone found in Spain has been dated to 1.2 million years old.

There is also indirect evidence for hominids in Europe date to between one and two million years ago.

Archaeologists excavating the cave around 46 years ago discovered the remains of a female Homo erectus and later a male Homo erectus who are thought to have lived there around 450,000 years ago. The picture above shows the skull of one of the fossils

However, the remains show just how far Homo erectus had spread from its ancestral home in Africa.

It is likely the tooth – an adult incisor - belongs to Homo erectus as it is thought to be the only species of early human to have extended into Europe at the time.

However, tests are still to be carried out on the tooth, which has been given the designation Arago 149, to determine more about it.

It was found by a Miss Jacquey while she was taking part in summer excavation work in the cave. She had been working with another young archaeologist, Valentine Loescher, when they uncovered the tooth.

The tooth will now be analysed to see if experts can learn any more about the species it belonged to, what they were eating and how they lived, which can be locked within the minerals of the fossilised tooth