An ancient skull was found within Forbes' Quarry by Captain Edmund Flint of the Royal Navy in 1848. Being the secretary of the Gibraltar Museum Society, he presented his find to the society on 3 March 1848. This was only the second Neanderthal fossil ever found. The skull had unusual features, but its significance as a representative of an extinct human species was not realised until 1864, eight years after the 1856 discovery of the more extensive assemblage of Neanderthal remains in the Neander Valley of Germany that eventually became the type specimen and source of the name of the species Homo neanderthalensis. The Forbes' Quarry skull attracted the attention of prominent scientists in Great Britain when it was presented at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Sciencein September 1864. Charles Darwin had long been curious about the skull, but was too ill to attend the meeting, so geologist Charles Lyell and anthropologist Hugh Falconer arranged to bring the skull to his residence so he could examine it. In a letter, Darwin described the skull as "wonderful". The skull found at Forbes' Quarry has been determined to be that of an adult female. She was probably over age 40 at the time of her death, as indicated by extensive wear on the teeth, as well as a bony growth inside the forehead that is also observed in modern humans, in whom it occurs after menopause. The original find was done in a time where the palaeontological dating was still in its infancy, and no stratigraphic information was supplied with the skull, making dating at best guesswork. Another specimen from a different locale on Gibraltar has however been dated to between 30 to 50 thousand years old. This is the site of the most recent evidence of the Neanderthals of Gibraltar, which are thought to have been present here until as recently as 28,000 years ago.
Quarrying
The area was quarried for stone during the 19th century to supply much-needed material to reinforce and rebuild many of the fortress' fortifications. This activity removed much of the vegetated slope at the cavern's base. The cave in which the Neanderthal skull had been deposited was almost totally destroyed, leaving very little evidence for future research.
