Additional Homo sapiens fossils excavated at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco in 2017—the first finds there date to 1960—date to about 300,000 years ago and are the oldest known members of our species. Their faces, jaws and teeth look modern, while their braincases retain archaic features. They push the earliest Homo sapiens fossil evidence back by roughly 100,000 years without proving Morocco was humanity's single birthplace. The site is thousands of kilometres from East Africa. Genomic studies support deep population structure across Africa. The video argues that Khoisan peoples carry the earliest-diverging signatures and may represent a separate 200,000-year lineage, but that claim is stronger than current genetic evidence supports.
Jebel Irhoud fossils date Homo sapiens to about 300,000 years ago
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Key facts
- The first Jebel Irhoud fossil finds date to 1960; additional Homo sapiens fossils were excavated in 2017.
- The fossils' faces, lower jaws and teeth align with Homo sapiens, but their braincases retain archaic features.
- At roughly 300,000 years old, they are the oldest known Homo sapiens fossils and extend the species' fossil record by about 100,000 years; they do not establish a single birthplace.
- Jebel Irhoud lies thousands of kilometres from East African fossil sites.
- Genetic studies support deep population structure across Africa. Some Khoisan-related ancestry is among the most deeply diverged, but claims that Khoisan peoples as a whole form the earliest-diverging living population or one isolated 200,000-year lineage are not established.
Sources
New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African origin of ...pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Fossil evidence points to an African origin of Homo sapiens from a group called either H. heidelbergensis or H. rhodesiensis.
Jebel Irhoud - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
Originally thought to be Neanderthals, the specimens have since been assigned to Homo sapiens and, as reported in 2017, have been dated to a "weighted average ...
Our species arose at least 300000 years agohumanorigins.si.edu
Fossils from Jebel Irhoud cave, Morocco, are now considered the oldest members of our species yet found. Dating to about 300,000 years old, the ...
The age of the hominin fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and the ...ui.adsabs.harvard.edu
The earliest fossil attributed to a modern form of Homo sapiens comes from eastern Africa and is approximately 195 thousand years old, therefore the emergence ...
World's oldest Homo sapiens fossils found in Morocco - Sciencescience.org
New dates and fossils from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco suggest that our species emerged across Africa. The new findings may help researchers sort ...
Ancient Fossils from Morocco Mess Up Modern Human ...scientificamerican.com
... Jebel Irhoud face, lower jaw and teeth align with those of H. sapiens, not Neandertals or other archaic humans. But the braincase is ...
The first of our kindmpg.de
The earliest Homo sapiens fossils are found across the entire African continent: Jebel Irhoud, Morocco (300 thousand years), Florisbad, South ...
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