Abstract
Struggling with this type of uncertainty is unique to human experience. It's unlikely that the hominids represented in the fossil record ever contemplated their identity-but humans sure have. Questions about who the hominids were and how they fit into the human evolutionary scheme consume paleoanthropologists (scientists who study the human fossil record). A fossilized hominid jawbone recovered from the Gran Dolina site in northern Spain has engendered a crisis of sorts, about the identity of Homo antecessor and its place in a widely held human evolutionary scenario.