[3] The animal remains include a hippopotamus' femur bone, and an immensely large pair of horns belonging to a species of extinct bovid.

The prehistoric site was discovered in May 1959 near the tell, south of the Yavne'el stream (Wadi Fidjdjas), by a member of Kibbutz Afikim who was levelling the ground for agriculture with a bulldozer.

[5] Excavations at the site began in 1960, led by Moshe Stekelis, assisted by zoologist Georg Haas, geologists Leo Picard and Nachman Shulman and several archaeology students, including Ofer Bar-Yosef and Naama Goren-Inbar.

The size and shape of the lower lumbar vertebra, dated to the Early Pleistocene, indicates that it belonged to an individual from a different species than the one represented by the 1.8-million-year-old skull unearthed at Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia.

After this discovery, Dr Barzilai assumed that different human species produced the stone tool industries present at Ubeidiya and Dmanisi, respectively.

[11] Other hominin skeletal material from Ubeidiya previously studied consists of a molar, a further minor finding, and a highly worn right lateral lower incisor.

[3] The analysis of the more recently discovered incisor identified the hominin species to which it belongs as one of the three extant during the Lower Pleistocene, but could not securely distinguish to which of them: Homo habilis, H. ergaster, or H. erectus.

stood a walled city which controlled the crossroads of the Jordan Valley and the road linking the Golan Heights to the port of Acco.