What are the current facts regarding Archanthropus of Petralona?

I came across this post a few days ago but declined to comment since it was late and I'd been drinking heavily :P But it's sad to think you still don't have an answer so here's some info:

I study the time period this skull, Petralona 1, comes from (the Middle Palaeolithic) and I work in the general area (the Balkans), and I had never heard the name "Archanthropus" before reading your post, which leads me to think the article you read was very outdated (it would be great if you could post a link) - although I now see that the Wikipedia page for Petralona Cave does refer to it this way. Today I think most researchers would classify it as Homo heidelbergensis or "pre-Neanderthal".

Morphologically, the skull looks exactly like you would expect from that time and place. It has the primitive long (American) football-shaped head, and very robust brow ridge, but it also has a lot of Neanderthal traits like a double-arched brow, depressed glabella, sloping malar bones, modest midfacial prognathism, and it looks to me like there is a bit of an occipital bun (chignon). All of these traits together suggest it fits perfectly on the line of human evolution in Europe, from the earliest European archaic Homo (as early as 1.8ma) to the Neanderthals (whose traits become prominent after about 200ka).

As for the age, estimates have varied wildly between 70-700ka. Without looking into it, I have generally understood it to be about 250ka, which I think is the best accepted date, since this is the period its transitional morphology implies. Wikipedia is inconsistent on this matter - the Petralona Cave entry says it is 700ka, but the List of Human Evolution Fossils says it is 250-500ka.

However, even if it is as old as 700-800ka, I don't see why this would challenge the Out-of-Africa theory. We know archaic humans entered Europe at least a million years before that, from Dmanisi in Georgia, and spread to the Iberian peninsula by about 1.2ma, well before any age estimate for Petralona. Furthermore, the Out-of-Africa theory is concerned with the spread of modern humans, H. sapiens sapiens, at the advent of the Upper Palaeolithic, 30-50ka, much younger than the youngest estimates for Petralona.

So Petralona has no relevance to either the earliest evidence of humans in Europe, nor to the earliest modern humans in Europe. The discrepancies in age estimation are only relevant to the timeline of the emergence of Neanderthal traits within the archaic human population already living in Europe. For a comprehensive analysis of the Petralona remains, see Murrill's book, Petralona Man: A Descriptive and Comparative Study, With New Important Information on Rhodesian Man.

P.S. While I was researching this post I stumbled across a new paper that is relevant to my current research, so thanks! Procrastination pays off again!