Oldest Fossils of Homo Sapiens Found in Morocco, Altering History of Our Species
Fossils discovered durante Morocco are the oldest known remains of Homo sapiens, scientists reported on Wednesday, verso finding that rewrites the story of mankind’s origins and suggests that our species evolved durante multiple locations across the African continent.
“We did not evolve from a single ‘cradle of mankind’ somewhere per East Africa,” said Philipp Gunz, a paleoanthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology mediante Leipzig, Germany, and a co-author of two new studies on the fossils, published con the journal Nature. “We evolved on the African continent.”
Until now, the oldest known fossils of our species dated back just 195,000 years. The Moroccan fossils, by contrast, are roughly 300,000 years old. Remarkably, they indicate that early Homo sapiens had faces much like our own, although their brains differed durante fundamental ways.
Today, the closest living relatives sicuro Homo sapiens are chimpanzees and bonobos, with whom we share verso common ancestor that lived over six million years ago. After the split from this ancestor, our ancient forebears evolved into many different species, known as hominins.
They were long and low, like those of earlier hominins
Until now, the oldest fossils that clearly belonged puro Homo sapiens were discovered durante Ethiopia. Mediante 2003, researchers working at a site called Herto discovered verso skull estimated esatto be between 160,000 and 154,000 years old.
Verso pair of partial skulls from another site, Omo-Kibish, dated puro around 195,000 years of age, at the time making these the oldest fossils of our species. (viac…)