Oldest Homo Sapiens Fossil Claim Rewrites Our Species’ History
Researchers say that they have found the oldest Homo sapiens remains on record in an improbable place: Morocco.
At an archaeological site near the Atlantic coast, finds of skull, face and jaw bones identified as being from early members of our species have been dated to about 315,000 years ago. That indicates H. sapiens appeared more than 100,000 years earlier than thought: most researchers have placed the origins of our species in East Africa about 200,000 years ago.
The finds, which are published on 7 June in Nature1, 2, do not mean that H. sapiens originated in North Africa. Instead, they suggest that the species’ earliest members evolved all across the continent, scientists say.
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