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The skull found in Petralona Cave in 1960 is featured on the 50d Greek stamp, March 1982, and is one of a set of six. It is a fossil hominid cranium. Apparently the skull was adhering to a rock through a stalagmite column, while the skeleton of the same individual was buried under a stalagmite cover approximately 5 cm thick. The skeleton had been separated from the skull during a dry period apparently; the soil, having shrunk, moved the skeleton, while the skull remained attached by stalagmites about 20-24 cm above the skeleton.

The skull belonged to a human who died there before the formation of the travertine layer. Samples from the stalagmite cover of the rock to which the skull adhered and from the travertine layer covering the skeleton have been Electron Spin Resonance dated and shown to be 670,000 years BP and 340,000 years BP. The same stalagmite dated different ways give ages of 440,000 and even 200.000 years, the latter possibly being the most accurate.

The skull was well preserved due to being covered a relatively short time after death by a brown calcite layer over pale whitish stal encrustation. Unfortunately the skeleton itself was not preserved and has been lost forever.