Description : The cave Victoria is a paleontological site located in the municipality of Cartagena ( Spain ). It is located on the southern slope of the Cabezo de San Ginés , within a calcareous massif near the Mar Menor and the eastern foothills of the Cartagena-La Unión mining mountains . It was excavated by the Catalan paleontologist Josep Gibert i Clols . It is a deposit of karst origin that during the Lower Pleistocene functioned as a den of hyenas (Gibert et al ., 1992). Fossils of abundant fauna have been found such as Hippopotamus antiquus , Canis etruscus , Mammuthus meridionalis , Equus granatensis , Stephanorhinus etruscus , Homotherium crenatidens , Megantereon , Pachycrocuta brevirostris, and Theropithecus oswaldi , an African blueberry . The remains most significant cave Victoria are small fossils that Professor Gibert identified as human remains 2 3 and dated to 1.2 million years contemporaries to those of the man Orce of the paleontological site Sale Micena , province of Granada . This hypothesis was quite contested among paleontologists and was the subject of intense debate. The humanity of these remains, like those of Venta Micena , has not yet been globally accepted by the scientific community. If confirmed that they were human remains, the Victoria cave fossils, together with those from Venta Micena, would probably correspond to Homo erectus , 4 and would be, perhaps, the first humans to cross the Strait of Gibraltar and colonize Europe .
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