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Scientists Find Oldest Known Specimens of the Human Species
Remains found in Morocco date from about 300,000 years ago, about 100,000 older than any other fossils of Homo sapiens

The bones of ancient hunters unearthed in Morocco are the oldest known specimens of the human species, potentially pushing back the clock on the origin of modern Homo sapiens, scientists announced Wednesday.

Found among stone tools and the ashes of ancient campfires, the remains date from about 300,000 years ago, a time when the Sahara was green and several early human species roamed the world, the scientists said. That makes them about 100,000 years older than any other fossils of Homo sapiens—the species to which all people today belong.

“These dates were a big wow,” said anthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Leipzig, Germany. He led an international team of scientists who reported the discovery Wednesday in Nature. “This material represents the very roots of our species—the very oldest Homo sapiens found in Africa or anywhere.”


Until now, most researchers believed that modern humankind emerged gradually from a population centered in East Africa around 200,000 years ago. Previous discoveries of early Homo sapiens fossils have been concentrated at sites in Ethiopia.

The fossil discovery at Jebel Irhoud near Marrakesh in North Africa, however, suggests that early humans had already spread across most of Africa by then.

“What’s really neat about this discovery is that you now have evidence of modern Homo sapiens across Africa, about as far from sites in East Africa as you can get,” said anthropologist Bernard Wood at George Washington University’s Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology, who wasn’t involved in the find.

As early experiments in the human form, these ancestors had quite modern-looking facial features, but relatively primitive skulls, suggesting that the cognitive capacities of modern brains had yet to take shape, the scientists said.

Their faces were likely so contemporary in appearance that they might pass unnoticed on a crowded city sidewalk, although they might need to wear a hat to disguise their skull’s elongated shape, Dr. Hublin said.

Such combinations of traits, though, blur the differences that distinguish one human ancestor and another, making it hard for scholars to classify species accurately. In fact, several early human species, such as Neanderthals, were so closely related to Homo sapiens that they could all interbreed, modern genetic evidence shows.

But several independent experts said they agreed that the fossils most likely belonged to Homo sapiens.

“It has a modern face and a primitive brain case,” said John Fleagle, an expert on primate evolution at Stony Brook School of Medicine, who wasn’t part of the research group. “You would expect it to have a few primitive characteristics even if it is on the main line of our lineage. It shows what is probably an earlier stage of our species.”

The scientists found bones of three adults, a teenager and a child mixed in with sharpened flint tools and the butchered bones of gazelles and zebra, suggesting that a hunting party had camped there. Fires had scorched the tools and that proved key to determining the age of the find.

The researchers tested the tools using a technique called thermoluminescence dating, which reveals how much time has elapsed since an object has been heated. By that measure, they calculated that the tools were 315,000 years old, plus or minus 34,000 years.

They also dated tooth enamel from a fossil jaw using electron spin resonance, which can measure the residual radiation that has built up since a material formed. That yielded an age of 286,000 years, plus or minus 32,000 years, the scientists said.

“It leads us to conclude that 300,000 years old is the best age for these fossils,” said Daniel Richter at the Max Planck Institute, who conducted the dating studies.

:Oops: time to rethink certain incorrect theories by a certain poster.

EVIDENCE OF MODERN HOMO SAPIENS ALL THROUGHOUT AFRICA.

EARLIEST KNOWN HUMAN FOSSILS 100,000 YEARS BEFORE PREVIOUS FINDINGS.

ALL HUMANS CURRENTLY ALIVE ARE MEMBERS OF THE SAME SPECIES - HOMO SAPIENS. ::BOOM::


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