An article authored by an international research team led by Prof. Mirosław Masojć has been published in Quaternary Science Reviews. The list of co-authors also includes other representatives of the Institute of Archaeology, University of Wrocław – Prof. Józef Szykulski and Grzegorz Michalec, PhD Candidate.

The paper, entitled ‘A Late Pleistocene human tooth from Khutul Usny Cave (FV 8), Mongolia – New evidence for early occupation of Eastern Central Asia by Homo sapiens’, presents the results of analyses of a human tooth discovered at Khutul Usny Cave (site FV 8) in the Gobi Altai region of Mongolia. The specimen, indirectly dated to approximately 31–28 ka cal BP, is a permanent maxillary right lateral incisor most likely belonging to a Homo sapiens individual.

This discovery is of particular importance for research on the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), a period generally considered to have been marked by depopulation across much of Mongolia due to extremely unfavourable climatic and environmental conditions. Archaeological evidence of human presence from this time remains scarce, and human fossils are exceptionally rare. The tooth represents only the second fossil evidence of early Homo sapiens in Mongolia, alongside the Salkhit skullcap, and the first recovered within a secure archaeological and geological context.

The thick stratigraphic sequence of Khutul Usny Cave and its associated archaeological assemblages provide crucial new evidence for human presence and the exploitation of natural resources at the margins of the Gobi Desert and the Altai Mountains around the onset of the LGM.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2026.109994