Fossils shaking up our understanding of human origins

[Judi Lynn]

By Karen Graham Jun 7, 2017 in Science

There is a broad consensus among scientists that human evolution began on the African continent. Generally, fossils of Homo sapiens have been found in East Africa or even Sub-Saharan Africa, but a fossil find in Morocco has set evolution on its head.

Not one, but two new studies were published Wednesday in the online journal, Nature that detail the discovery of the skulls, limb bones and teeth of five individuals unearthed on a Moroccan hillside.

The Moroccan fossils are significant because they are 100,000 years older than any previous Homo sapiens fossils found and could very well give us a clearer picture of where, when and how we evolved in Africa. Up until this latest find, the earliest known H. sapiens fossil was found in Ethiopia and was 195,000 years old.

The fact that the new fossils were unearthed at a site called Jebel Irhoud, located between Marrakech and Morocco's Atlantic coast, indicates that H. sapiens were more widespread on the African continent than first believed, and not confined to a population living in East Africa.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and-science/science/moroccan-fossils-push-human-time-line-back-300-000-years/article/494519#ixzz4jZej7Uzn