PALEONTOLOGISTS are hoping that a 700 000-year-old human tooth discovered near Cornelia in the north-eastern Free State will shed more light on a little known period of human prehistory. The “extremely big” and white upper molar of an archaic ancestor of modern man was found in layer of mud in a pit that is believed to have once been a prehistoric hyena den. James Brink, of the Florisbad Quaternary research station just outside Bloemfontein, said the tooth was the oldest human fossil found in the Orange Free State, and was more than twice the age of the famous Florisbad skull, which is estimated to be 260 000 years old. There is little fossil record of modern man’s development between 250 000 and 1 million years ago. Palaeontologists believe the Cornelia tooth ended up in the den after a hyena dragged a human head into its lair and left it amongst the remains of its previous meals.