Alfonso Benito Calvo, a geologist at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), has participated in some work published in the Journal of Quaternary Science that presents a new interpretation of the pre-Neanderthal site of San Quirce, in the province of Palencia, based on archaeological, geochronological and geomorphological data.

This site is characterized by simple stone tool technology, made up of hammerstones, manuports, flakes, and denticulates, and this is interpreted as an adaptation to local environmental conditions while the Lower to Middle Palaeolithic transition was taking place.

The geomorphological data compiled at the CENIEH, mapped using Geographical Information Systems at the Digital Mapping and 3D Analysis Laboratory, indicate that the site stands on a fluvial terrace that formed in the Pisuerga River valley during the Middle Pleistocene. These data have also been confirmed by new luminescence chronologies presented in this study, suggesting that it is older than 200,000 years.

The lead author of this paper was Marcos Terradillos Bernal, of the Universidad Isabel I, and the other participants were researchers from the University of Adelaide (Australia), the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), the CSIC-Institución Milá y Fontanals, and the Universidad de Burgos.