Direct radiocarbon dates for Vindija G(1) and Velika Pecina Late Pleistocene hominid remains

New accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dates taken directly on human remains from the Late Pleistocene sites of Vindija and Velika Pecina in th e Hrvatsko Zagorje of Croatia are presented. Hominid specimens from both si tes have played critical roles in the development of current perspectives o n modern human evolutionary emergence in Europe. Dates of approximate to 28 thousand years (ka) before the present (B.P.) and approximate to 29 ka B.P . for two specimens from Vindija G(1) establish them as the most recent dat ed Neandertals in the Eurasian range of these archaic humans, The human fro ntal bone from Velika Pecina, generally considered one of the earliest repr esentatives of modern humans in Europe, dated to approximate to 5 ka B.P., rendering it no longer pertinent to discussions of modern human origins. Ap art from invalidating the only radiometrically based example of temporal ov erlap between late Neandertal and early modern human fossil remains from wi thin any region of Europe, these dates raise the question of when early mod ern humans first dispersed into Europe and have implications for the nature and geographic patterning of biological and cultural interactions between these populations and the Neandertals.