Fossils discovered in northern Spain have prompted suggestions that humans roamed Europe far earlier than previously thought.

In a paper published in the journal Nature, Spanish researchers said they excavated a jaw bone, teeth and simple tools in a cave near the city of Burgos.

They said the fossils are around 400,000 years older than the previously oldest-known remains found at a nearby site 14 years ago.

That puts early humans in Europe as much as 1.2 million years ago.

Up to now archaeologists had found evidence of human activity in Spain, France and Italy dated at around 1 million years ago, but no human remains had been discovered, only animal bones and stone tools.

The team said their find added weight to the theory that early humans spread from Africa via the Middle East, not across the Straits of Gibraltar, because the jaw was a similar shape to one unearthed in the central Asian country of Georgia thought to be 1.7 million years old.

© Independent Television News Limited 2009. All rights reserved.