A cranium was found in 1941during phosphate mining of the Pestera Cioclovina cave in South Transylvania, which is one of the earliest reliable fossils shed to light in Europe.
The specimen perserves the cranial vault and much of its cranial base, while the face is almost absent: only the frontal aspect of the orbits and the upper part of the nasal bones are preserved. The cranium is in good condition and appears to have suffered minimal post-mortem distortion.
The Aurignacian culture to which the cranium is assigned belongs to the Upper Paleolthic that has been located to Europe and Southwest Asia. Its name originates from the Aurignac site in France and covers the time span between the 37,000 to 27,000 BP. Its main characteristics are the tools (worked boned or antler points with grooves cut in the botton and flinttools with fine blades and bladelets struck from prepared cores) and some of the earliest examples of cave art, as well as pendants, bracelets,ivory beads and figurines (they depict faunal representations of the time period, along with some anthropomorphised that could be inferred as related to religion.
The aforementioned triats led scientists to suggest that the members of this culture were the first modern humans in Europe. To support this inference the Aurignacian products were being juxtaposed to human remains;within those limits the cranium was submitted to virtual reconstruction which allowed the inspection of the endocranial surface and the detailed anatomical description of endocranial features that were not visible otherwise. The result withdrawn was that both the endocranial and endocast morphology indicate a clearly modern human pattern, which verify and reinforce the initial hypothesis.